One night after work in Dublin, Mahir Sharma watched an AI agent he built call hotels in the United States and negotiate room rates on his behalf.
That project was not part of his job. This was one of the many AI experiments he pursues outside of work to stay current in an industry that is being reshaped by AI.
Sharma, a software engineer at a large tech company, says AI has dramatically increased his productivity, allowing him to complete some tasks in days that previously took months. But he also spends about 20 hours a week outside of work experimenting with AI tools like Cursor, which provides coding assistants at his own expense.
“I think experiments with AI are very important,” the 24-year-old said. “Without practical experience, it may be difficult to survive in this industry.”
Sharma is among those in technology who say the rise of AI is creating unforeseen tradeoffs. While this technology is helping us save time at work, it is sacrificing time after work to keep up with rapidly evolving tools and skills. An Ernst & Young survey of more than 1,000 US desk workers across six industries last year found that 85% are learning how to use AI outside of work.
For many employees, after-hours experimentation is driven as much by an interest in technology as a desire to remain competitive. Even as both companies have laid off thousands of employees in recent years, Meta and Microsoft are offering multi-million dollar compensation packages to top AI talent. Hiring for AI engineers at LinkedIn has skyrocketed since 2022, while hiring for many traditional engineering roles has remained flat or declined, according to data shared with Business Insider.
AI’s new homework
In early 2025, Tanvi Pithal started worrying about AI coming to her job.
Pisar, who at the time was a product designer at an AI healthcare startup in San Jose, said the corporate leadership summit highlighted the speed at which AI was advancing and raised concerns that some UX and product design tasks could eventually be automated.
She decided to expand her AI skills and start exploring other opportunities, but was laid off last October. The email accompanying the layoffs said the job cuts were related to the company’s rapid adoption of AI.
Now a UX design contractor for a major tech company, Pisal spends 10 to 15 hours a week learning about AI outside of work, including experimenting with tools and attending workshops. She has also spent hundreds of dollars on AI tools and workshops, including subscriptions to ChatGPT and Claude.
“If you don’t take a few hours on the weekend to stay up to date, try out tools, and read up on the latest information, you start to fall behind,” said Pisar, 29, of San Jose.
While some employees cited gaps in AI training, others said time was a bigger constraint. Despite using AI extensively in their work, many say their day-to-day responsibilities limit their time to consider the growing number of AI tools and models. The challenge is not only to stay on top of the tools needed to do the job today, but also to understand which tools may be important tomorrow.
Still, not all tech workers feel pressured to learn AI during off-hours.
Manoj Aggarwal, a principal engineer at a large software company, spends two to three hours a week experimenting with AI tools outside of work, with a subscription that costs about $60 a month. He said employers provide access to many of the latest AI tools and allow people to develop AI skills on the job. Much of his reading and experimentation takes place after his young daughter has fallen asleep.
Udit Mehrotra, head of product at Amazon, spends about five to seven hours a week experimenting with AI outside of work. He said he built 10 apps in about a month in December, working nights and weekends with Claude Cord as his main assistant. But in recent months, he has been trying to approach learning in a more sustainable way.
“I started thinking of it more like a marathon than a sprint,” said Mehrotra, a 30-year-old Seattle resident.
An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement that the company provides AI training and learning resources to its employees, including an internal hub that helps employees identify AI tools relevant to their jobs. A spokesperson said Amazon encourages employees to experiment with AI as part of their daily work.
For some, the pace of change in the industry has made something closer to a sprint feel like the best option.
Abhinav Vohra, a senior applied scientist at Amazon based in Seattle, spends about eight to 12 hours a week outside of work keeping up with the latest in AI. He said he has spent about $3,000 on AI tools, conference fees and professional memberships over the past year.
“Continuous learning has quietly become part of the job, even if it happens outside of work,” the 32-year-old said.
Much of Bora’s AI learning happens at night and on weekends. This is because his working day is spent on meetings and deliverables. The result is a “learning tax” that blurs the line between professional development and personal time, he said.
“My concern is that one AI tool won’t replace me overnight,” he says. “The bigger concern is that the baseline will become technologically outdated in a field that is constantly changing.”
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