Mike Liang
From Spreadsheets to AI-Powered Strategy
15 years in finance at a San Francisco tech company. Same routine every day: 6 AM coffee, Excel open by 6:30, building budgets and reports until I couldn't see straight. Predictable work. Stable.
My daughter blindsided me one night at dinner. "Dad, will AI take your job?" She'd seen something on TikTok about automation. I laughed it off, told her finance needed human judgment. But she had a point. The younger analysts on my team were using tools that churned out reports in hours. Work that used to take me days.
I ignored it for maybe two months. Then our VP announced we'd be "optimizing headcount through AI-enabled efficiency." Corporate speak for layoffs. Someone on my team sent around a link to JobRipper during a Tuesday afternoon Slack spiral. Half of us took the assessment during work hours, trying to look busy.
MODERATE risk, mine said. AI handles reporting and data crunching, but strategic decisions and managing people still need humans. Made me feel slightly less panicked. The platform suggested learning Python, machine learning basics, AI tools for finance like Tableau AI and GPT-4o. I bookmarked it.
Didn't actually start for another month. Too busy, too tired, too old to learn programming. Finally began a Coursera course on a Wednesday night. Failed the first quiz twice. Spent three weeks on material that should've taken one. Debugging Python at midnight made me feel like an idiot.
My daughter caught me swearing at my laptop one night. "You okay, Dad?" Not really. I was 38, learning to code, scared I'd get fired before I figured this out. But I kept going. Lunch breaks became learning time. Morning coffee shifted to 5:30 so I could study before work.
Six months in, I built something useful. An AI-assisted system that automated our monthly variance reports. My boss noticed the team was finishing reports faster, asked how. I showed him. He seemed impressed but didn't say much else. No promotion, no raise. Just kept my job while they cut two positions from another finance team.
I'm still here, still doing finance work. My daughter doesn't ask about AI anymore. She assumes I figured it out. Mostly I did. The work's different now—less grinding through spreadsheets, more interpreting what the AI outputs mean. I help teammates when they get stuck with the new tools. Somebody has to.
Still wake up at 6 AM. Still drink too much coffee. But I'm not terrified every time the VP schedules an all-hands meeting. That counts for something.