Lena Reinhard, leadership coach and KotlinConf'26 Day 2 keynote speaker, discusses the growing uncertainty in the tech industry driven by AI, job insecurity, and shifting career promises. She critiques the hype around AI productivity, warning against measuring output over outcomes and noting that AI tools require experienced
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“Over the last three to five years, many of the promises that drew people to tech have been called into question.”Q: In your keynote We Were Meant to Be , you touch on uncertainty, job insecurity, and how the tech industry is changing. What questions or experiences led you to create this talk, and what do you hope the audience sits with after hearing it?Q: You’ve written a lot about how to understand and improve productivity in engineering teams. (For example, your article How to Understand, Measure, and Improve Productivity in Your Engineering Team . ) With AI becoming more present in our daily work, how do you think our ideas of productivity are shifting, or need to shift, for individuals and teams?Q: In your talk description, you say that many of the promises of tech careers have crumbled. From what you’re seeing and hearing, what still draws people to tech today – and how do you think that motivation might evolve?Q: You work closely with leaders and speak a lot about leadership. For example, you explored the topic in your LeadDev talk on what we really mean when we talk about leadership. In periods of change and instability like the ones many teams are facing now, what do you think leaders most often underestimate about how uncertainty affects their teams?Sort: