Their jobs were among the first to be changed by AI. Now some are trying to avoid it

By Lisa Eadicicco, CNN

(CNN) — In 2024, software engineer Laura Housh began using AI as a helper for coding and other tasks. Two years later, Housh says she has a love-hate relationship with AI.

“I’ve tried to use it for coding, and I just can’t get behind it,” she said.

AI can provide direction or serve as a second set of eyes, she said, but added that it lacks the context to be truly useful.

Housh isn’t the only one who thinks AI isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Six in 10 tech workers who participated in a new survey say they try to avoid using AI, according to Stack Overflow, a popular question-and-answer site for programmers. The results of Stack Overflow’s 103-question survey, which includes responses from 30,000 software developers in 169 countries, were shared exclusively with CNN ahead of their Tuesday publication.

Software engineers have been at the forefront of the AI shift as one of the first industries to embrace the technology. Both tech giants and startups are increasingly using AI to write code, and “software developer” was ranked as the job most poised to be transformed by AI in an Indeed Hiring Lab report last year.

The survey’s results, like Housh’s experience, provide a glimpse at what that transition has been like for some developers, painting a mixed picture of both rising adoption and uncertainty about how the technology is reshaping their professions.

The Stack Overflow survey showed that 65% of responders use coding assistants or agents. Last year, Google’s research division published a survey of 5,000 tech professionals from around the world and found that 90% said they use AI in their job — a 14% increase from 2024.

But job unhappiness among respondents in Stack Overflow’s survey has also grown compared to last year. Nearly one in three said they are not happy in their current roles, compared to 28.4% last year. About 45% described themselves as “complacent” with their jobs and only 22.3% are “happy.”

The biggest factors among those who are complacent or unhappy are burnout, tech fatigue, economic uncertainty and a lack of clarity about upward mobility in their role.

Many of those anxieties would exist regardless of AI. But the fast pace of AI advancement has “augmented” some of those concerns, according to Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar.

“People have to completely retool their jobs, and so it is quite unnerving for folks to know exactly how much of what they’re doing will be automated,” Chandrasekar told CNN.

Software developers are grappling with concerns that are more nuanced than whether their jobs will be replaced, according to Chandrasekar. Senior programmers may feel the skills they’ve honed are no longer as relevant, he said. Entry-level workers are expected to operate as if they have three years of experience since “the bar has been raised” because of AI. Tech workers often use their spare time to learn the latest coding tools, he said.

AI has its limitations

Housh says she’s familiar with the pressures of learning and keeping up with AI. She said she watches AI-focused videos and reads platform documentation in her personal time — and she still struggles to keep up.

“It’s taxing because you have a lot of noise saying, ‘Do this, do this, do this, or you’ll get left behind,’” she said.

For programmers like Housh and Audrey Eschright, a software engineer with 20 years of experience, it’s not about a lack of desire to embrace the new technology. Rather, the problem is that AI agents have neither the broad general knowledge of an experienced developer nor the job-specific context of a longtime employee.

That can cause friction and more fatigue for developers, said Housh. What’s more, using AI instead of writing code manually can leave developers out of the loop of the solution, Eschright said.

“Writing code is how you solve problems,” said Eschright. “As a software engineer, the process of figuring out what a system does is to change it.”

This sentiment is also captured in Stack Overflow’s survey results. A little more than 74% of respondents said AI is useful for implementing code, and about 72% said it’s helpful for debugging — but only 34.4% say AI is useful for other job functions like communication and design.

The survey showed that just 6.6% trust AI with important decisions.

And about 78% said that source attribution is important when checking AI-generated code.

Developers are particularly careful about trusting AI today because the stakes are higher as more companies move AI projects from the pilot phase to mainstream use, according to Chandrasekar. A January report from Deloitte found 54% of the 3,200-plus business and IT leaders it surveyed expected to move 40% or more of their AI experiments into production in the next three to six months.

“I don’t like losing control; I like critical thinking and curiosity,” said Housh. “It’s just so important to be more curious than ever.”

The-CNN-Wire
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