This told essay is based on a conversation with Matt Lowrie, 55, who lives in Colorado and previously worked at Google. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I joined Google in 2006 as a test engineer. It was a very exciting time. The company gave us the freedom to try different things, so I felt like I could do anything in engineering.
I spent nearly 19 years there, but left after saving enough to retire early and because I felt pressured by the company to accelerate AI implementation. Since then, we have come to realize how useful AI is as a productivity tool in our daily lives.
Google made me feel old.
My initial focus at Google was 3D software, but I moved on to other parts of the company, including online web applications, Google Now, and cloud software.
By 2024, we felt that Google’s focus would increasingly shift to building AI capabilities into its products and encourage the use of AI to assist with coding. I was interested in machine learning, but at the time I was skeptical about implementing AI in this way.
I feared it would completely eliminate our jobs, and more than that, I struggled to trust technology in the work I was responsible for.
As someone who has been writing code for a long time, using AI was like having someone else write the code and fixing something that wasn’t working, which didn’t really interest me. I felt that I could no longer write something from scratch and come up with my own interesting solutions.
I had built up processes for getting things done over the years and found it difficult to quickly adapt to this new way of doing things, whereas my younger colleagues seemed to have an easier time picking up AI coding.
If this is the direction Google is going, I feel like I’m getting old.
In November 2025, I submitted my resignation and took early retirement at age 55. I was relieved and excited to start a new chapter, especially since I had made so many plans to achieve early retirement.
I learned that AI can improve productivity
It wasn’t until I quit and had more time to experiment with personal projects that I started to understand how AI could be incorporated into daily life.
I used Gemini to create a tool to search for matches by team and city to help me decide which World Cup matches to go to.
I told it to make the app’s UI look like an illustration on paper, and it understood exactly what I needed. If I had done it manually, it would have taken hours. This shows us that AI can be a great productivity tool.
I needed to develop skills I hadn’t used in years.
One tip for those trying to understand AI is to hone your written language skills. LLMs often require you to dictate entire paragraphs of context, but I didn’t do very well in English or humanities, so I had to redevelop these skills, even if it was silly.
For my brother’s birthday, I wanted to send him a funny AI-generated image of Stephen Curry holding a cake. I started by saying: ”Please create an image of Stephen Curry holding a birthday cake.” The results were terrible. I had to modify the prompt explaining that I wanted Callie to hold the cake in her hand and present it like a chef. I learned that to get the images I wanted, I had to be descriptive.
I don’t regret leaving Google
I’m glad I made the right decision to leave Google at the right time.
The AI race is constantly making companies come out with powerful tools that are available to everyone. So far, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything I would have gained as an engineer at Google. Plus, you don’t have the added stress of trying to figure out how to use your LLM while meeting deadlines at work.
No regrets.
Google did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Do you have a story to share about adapting to AI in the workplace? Contact this reporter at: ccheong@businessinsider.com