Julie Yack

Beyond AI Adoption
We’ll Hold the Door Open

May was a busy month.

I spent time in Washington, DC, talking with policymakers and advocates about AI. I attended DynamicsCon in Las Vegas. Later in the month, I traveled to Portorož, Slovenia, for Dynamics Minds. Somewhere in between, I celebrated another birthday.

That last part feels more relevant than it might have a few years ago.

At Dynamics Minds, I participated in a speed mentoring session. My topic was “reskilling and mid-life crisis.”

If you’re wondering whether that’s a sign of the times, the answer is probably yes.

One attendee sat down across from me and started talking about AI.

Not from the perspective of someone trying to learn a new tool. Not from the perspective of someone looking for the latest prompt engineering trick. He was wrestling with something much bigger.

He was a developer.

A good developer.

He liked building software. He liked solving problems. He liked the work.

But the future being described to him felt different. Everywhere he turned, he heard conversations about agents writing code, AI-assisted development, and a future where humans supervise increasingly capable systems. The more he talked, the clearer it became that he wasn’t worried about learning a new skill.

He was worried about whether he still had a place in the future.

As we talked, I could see the weight of it on his face.

For all the conversations I’ve had this year about AI, this one felt different.

The irony is that I had just spent a month surrounded by conversations about AI.

In Washington, the discussions focused on policy, regulation, and societal impact.

At conferences, attendees wanted to talk about governance and cost. At my “Negotiate with Copilot” session, most of the questions weren’t about what Copilot could do. People wanted to know how to govern it, how to justify it, and how to make sure it delivered value.

The conversation has changed.

The time for dabbling in AI is over.

Organizations are moving beyond experimentation. The questions now are about operationalization, adoption, governance, value, and scale.

And yet sitting across from this developer, none of those topics seemed particularly important.

He wasn’t worried about governance.

He wasn’t worried about cost.

He was worried about himself.

Maybe that’s why the conversation resonated with me.

A birthday has a funny way of making you reflect on your own journey. I’ve been in technology long enough to watch entire waves of innovation come and go. I’ve seen people reinvent themselves multiple times. I’ve watched careers take unexpected detours. I’ve watched people leave technology altogether.

And I’ve watched some of them come back.

At some point, I told him something that felt obvious to me.

Go do something else for a while.

Take a break if you need one. Explore other interests. Figure out what comes next.

Technology will still be here.

We’ll hold the door open for you when you’re ready.

His expression changed immediately.

“I never thought about being able to come back.”

I’ve replayed that sentence in my head more than once since then.

Because I know people who have left and come back.

I’ve watched people step away to raise children. To care for aging parents. To start businesses. To recover from burnout. To pursue entirely different passions. Some eventually returned to technology. Others found new paths altogether.

To me, the possibility of returning seemed obvious.

To him, it wasn’t.

Somewhere along the way, he had come to believe that every decision was permanent. That stepping away meant falling behind forever. That if he couldn’t keep up with the pace of change, the door would close behind him.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that conversation wasn’t really about AI.

It was about belonging.

Throughout the month, I participated in conversations about inclusion, mentorship, sponsorship, leadership, advocacy, policy, and technology. One of the highlights was participating in the Bad Ass Bitches panel at DynamicsCon, a conversation that deserves its own post.

At first glance, those topics seem unrelated.

But underneath them all was the same question:

How do we help people move forward when the world around them is changing?

Sometimes the answer is training.

Sometimes it’s mentorship.

Sometimes it’s governance.

Sometimes it’s creating opportunities.

Sometimes it’s simply reminding someone that they still belong.

After a month of conversations about AI, I came away believing something simple.

The future of AI won’t be determined by the technology alone. It will be determined by our ability to help people adapt and adopt.

Not just organizations.

People.

The people excited about what’s next.

The people who are unsure.

The people who are struggling.

The people wondering whether they still have a place in the future being built around them.

Technology will continue to evolve. It always has.

The real challenge isn’t whether AI will change the way we work.

It’s whether we’re willing to help each other navigate that change.

And sometimes, that starts by reminding someone that the door they thought had closed is still open.

We’ll be here when they’re ready.