Danny Hammam feels he is falling behind even in his off time.
The software engineer, who lives in New York City, said every time a new AI tool is released, it can trigger a new wave of anxiety.
“My first thought is not, ‘Oh, this is so exciting. Another AI tool has dropped.’ It’s, ‘I’m behind it.’ We have to learn this as soon as possible,” Hammam said. “Then you start freaking out.”
Like many technology workers, hammams are facing an ever-growing wave of AI tools, starting with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Since then, Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI have been in an arms race to outdo each other with the latest frontier models.
Danny Hamam is a software engineer in New York City. Keeping up with the pace of change can cause anxiety, he says. Janice Chan of BI
The monthly pace of major model releases has roughly quadrupled since 2023, according to Peter Asentorp, a Denmark-based programmer and designer who has built a database to monitor the growing capabilities of AI.
“The pace has been so fast that I’ve lost track of what’s new and what’s best. I’m building and coding these models every day,” he said.
The number of major AI releases rose from 18 in 2023 to 69 in 2025, according to a tally by Assentorp. By mid-2026, leading AI companies have released 30 more models.
The rapid pace of AI releases can make mastering a particular tool feel like a waste, said Jack Boudreau, CEO and co-founder of Habits, a fintech company focused on financial planning.
“Being an expert in that field is almost worthless, because if you wait another week, they’ll make it easier,” he said.
Advances in AI mean not only the potential for increased productivity and excitement, but also keeping up with the breakneck speed of change, software engineers told Business Insider. For some, the information firehose has paralyzed the workplace, creating a growing sense that the tools they feel pressured to master have the upper hand.
“I think this is just the beginning,” Japanese developer Sacha Greif said of the impact of AI on coding. He predicts that the AI giants will eventually eliminate the need for many standalone software products, such as project management tools, leaving less room for companies to manufacture them. “We are seeing a hollowing out of the industry.”
Coding is the first major advance in AI in the world of work, putting tens of millions of software developers around the world at the forefront of this transformation and giving other white-collar workers a preview of the existential reckoning that will come for everyone else.
Lose agency to agents
The shadows of that future are already visible to those who fear that AI will replace their jobs. Greif runs the technology research publisher Devographics, which recently conducted a developer survey with about 7,000 respondents. More than 4 in 10 say AI tools threaten their job security.
That anxiety is partly related to how rapidly work itself is changing. As AI takes on more coding tasks, developers are spending more and more time guiding and managing AI systems, and now agents can also perform prompts.
Advances in AI mean the potential for increased productivity and excitement, but they also mean keeping up with the breakneck pace of change. Janice Chan of BI
“We’re now building machines that make machines,” said New Zealand developer Annie Vella.
But so far, these changes have not led to a collapse in employment. Job openings for software development have been increasing little by little recently. But it’s not just a fear of substitutes. Advances are forcing developers to rethink their relationship with the aircraft itself. Every time a new model emerges, we get better at writing code, and some people wonder how it is that a tool can perform the skills it took years to learn quickly, if not perfectly.
Cary Cooper, professor of organizational psychology and health at the University of Manchester Business School, said some developers also fear that AI will increasingly dictate how developers work, potentially undermining their skills and turning them into technology “service drones”.
Cal Newport, author and Georgetown University computer science professor, said that “the deep work required to write code from scratch creates a deeper sense of satisfaction in the long run” than managing a bot.
“Waiting endlessly for a model to spit out code (what many people now call ‘bot-sitting’) is boring,” Newport said.
At the same time, workers are facing increased pressure from employers to go all-in on AI. Companies are using dashboards to track employee AI usage, monitor the number of tokens employees spend, and incorporate AI adoption into performance reviews.
Herminia Ibarra, professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, said part of the pressure comes from organizations and managers overestimating how quickly engineers can deploy AI, what the technology can and cannot do, and then judging employees against those expectations.
“Engineers are stuck because they are being asked to innovate in business-as-usual mode,” she says.
Ben Eubanks, an analyst and researcher who studies HR technology and workforce trends, said he has heard that the anxiety among some software engineers is so deep that some are considering career changes to sales or support roles.
“How much more can we optimize?”
Not everyone is exhausted. Developer Rafa Rafael said AI allows him to spend less time troubleshooting issues and researching fixes and more time understanding requirements and considering features.
“I feel like I’m more involved in the product as a whole, not just the code itself,” said Rafael, who lives in the Philippines.
As a developer, Anga Pratama currently primarily oversees workflows and manages multiple AI tools simultaneously, rather than writing code. The change has increased the mental intensity of the job, he said.
“The faster things get done, the pressure changes from ‘Can we get this done?’ ‘How much further can we optimize?'” said Pratama, who is based in Indonesia.
For some people, it’s hard to escape conversations about technology. At work, online, and in our daily lives, AI chatter can feel like a constant process.
Akshaye Singh, who studied cognitive science with a concentration in computing and AI at UCLA, is channeling some of her anxiety into action through Frame, a San Francisco startup that helps creators create videos about AI and its impact on society.
Hammam said it’s good to see how much he has learned and accomplished over the past few years. Janice Chan of BI
Singh said he expects humans will not be able to catch up with AI systems. “It’s biologically impossible,” he said.
Raphael is now enjoying riding the AI wave, but it took some adjustment. He initially found AI more tedious than traditional coding because he spent extra time experimenting with prompts. Rafael said he now avoids coding after work, choosing instead to spend time with his family, watch TV and relax. He also stopped trying to keep up with each new AI release.
“There’s always something new, so I’ll only consider it if I think it will actually help my work,” Rafael said.
The challenges are both personal and organizational. Kathy Gersh, CEO of change management firm Kotter, said many engineers are worried about the dual concerns of keeping up with AI and how it will affect their careers.
To “silence some of the noise,” companies should encourage employees to share what they’ve learned with each other, she says. That way, she says, workers will feel like they’re “going with the tide rather than being hit by it.”
Hammam, a software engineer from New York, said that despite all the anxiety AI causes, the positive thing is that he realizes how much he has learned and accomplished over the past few years.
“You’re building something you never thought you would have been able to build without extra pressure,” he says.
What do you think about how the software engineering industry is changing? Let us know below.