Tech may no longer be the best place to build a career.
Alana Karen, author of Adventures of Women in Tech, spent 23 years at Google after joining as employee #319.
We discuss:
• Why post-COVID scarcity shifted Google’s internal politics from advocating for teams to protecting jobs and territory.
• Why engineers who once felt uniquely secure are now watching companies cut people while investing heavily in AI infrastructure.
• Why interviews with 80 women surfaced bad management, shrinking opportunity, and work that stopped feeling meaningful.
• Why the five-to-ten-person team working around the clock can ship breakthroughs while still creating burnout and failure.
• Why AI fluency now means using the tools, understanding their flaws, and asking whether your own role is replaceable.
“Don’t marry tech and never look around.”
If AI keeps improving, would you double down on a tech career or take those skills into another industry?
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