Midlife MavericksThey came to a panel afraid AI would take their jobs. The questions afterwards were much older.
Thursday, the hottest night of the year, and I was in a room full of women in their early twenties, finishing their degrees, starting internships in finance. Forty degrees outside and the room filled up anyway.
The topic was artificial intelligence: who actually decides, when there’s a machine in the mix.
They were all afraid. Someone had put it in their heads that AI is going to take their jobs before they’ve even started them.
They’re scared of the wrong thing.
I’ve been in finance for 25 years. I remember exactly what the donkey work of the first ten looked like. Reading reports at dawn, moving numbers from one place to another, formatting presentations at three in the morning, building the same spreadsheet for the thousandth time. These days AI does all of it in minutes.
On the panel we talked about what’s left when that work disappears. What the machine doesn’t take. Knowing how to sell. Knowing how to write so the person on the other end feels it’s actually you. Reading a room and clocking who really runs it. Knowing yourself, properly. And real financial literacy, the kind none of us were ever taught.
That’s what I told them, with the air conditioning losing its war against the heat. AI does everything you can do on a computer. What it doesn’t do is everything else.
But the part that stayed with me wasn’t the panel.
It was what came after.
The official conversation ended and they came over to me. One by one, in low voices, away from the microphone. Things they weren’t going to ask in public.
What do I do if a man harasses me at work? How am I assertive without coming across as aggressive? What do I do when they try to make me smaller in a meeting? How do I raise my voice without being punished for it? Who actually judges me when I report to three bosses at once? How do I become visible and move up? And where do I put my money, when do I start investing?
Not one of those questions was about AI.
And I answered every one, one at a time, no rush, always with examples from my own life and career. We talked about the toxic boss. The nights I feared for my safety around colleagues or clients. The chances I grabbed with both hands, and the ones I let slip because at the time I lacked the nerve, or didn’t even see them go past.
And something hit me in the chest.
They’re the same questions I was asking twenty-five years ago.
Point for point. A new generation, a technology that didn’t exist when I started, and the list of fears is the same.
And I’d bet they’re yours too. Whether you’re 25 or 50, in an internship or running a team. If you’re a woman and you work, you’ve asked yourself these questions, probably with no one to ask them out loud.
It’s 2026. They’ve been sold the panic of AI coming to steal their seat, but what actually scares them is still being the only women in a room full of men, with no idea what to do when it goes wrong.
Give me strength. We should have sorted this out a long time ago.
I left far later than I meant to, which is the sign of a good night. I should have been exhausted. I was full of hope instead.
The questions were heavy, some of them hurt to hear. But I had an answer for every one, all of them I had paid for dearly, and they wanted to hear them.
Those women already know which question matters. And the one who answers a question like that is someone who’s been through it and is willing to tell you. No machine gives them that.
They’ll be fine. They’re already asking the right questions, which is more than you can say for plenty of people twice their age.
Comment below. What did you have to learn the hard way that no one warned you about? I read every response.
This article was first published in Portuguese in my weekly column Oh pá, não me lixem! for Executiva.
