There are endless discussions about AI changing the workplace. One job felt it to the core: coding.
Business Insider wanted to understand exactly how profound this change has been, for better or worse – and often both.
We wanted to talk to engineers about their feelings and experiences: the excitement and trepidation, their everyday work life and their career prospects. Has AI made them more productive? Were their skills still relevant? And how did the new technology change their relationships with superiors and colleagues?
The result was “The Great Coding Reset,” a six-part series chronicling this transformative moment as AI coding tools are reshaping daily workflows, business strategies, and the meaning of being a software engineer.
Here’s what we learned:
Table of Contents
The rapid speed of AI surprised us
Things are moving fast in technology, and even faster when it comes to AI. That was a big challenge trying to capture the moment.
In early May, Tokenmaxxing – the concept of leveraging AI as much as possible – began to go mainstream. Companies used leaderboards to turn AI use into friendly competition. The tokens flowed; limitless experimentation was encouraged.
Just a few weeks later, Uber’s COO said the rising token costs were difficult to justify, and Amazon closed an internal ranking. By June, companies were focused on containing ballooning budgets.
The engineers kept us updated on everything in real time. Their views and experiences changed over the course of weeks or even days. This rapid pace meant a surge in productivity, a flood of experimentation, and in some cases the exit of developers from the industry.
Engineers are not a monolith
The AI debate is based on worst-case or best-case scenarios: it will either destroy all jobs or create a utopian society. When you talk to people on the front lines, their feelings are often more complicated.
For every software engineer worried about AI automating parts of the work they love, we heard from another who happily spends their weekends working with new tools. One developer said he was doing more with AI but was concerned about giving it too much control.
Similar nuances were also reflected in the survey results we collected throughout the series. One respondent told us that AI had “made their work worse in many ways.” Others disagreed, saying technology has allowed them to solve more complex problems while still having control over the process.
The future of young developers remains unclear
Many engineers are now AI managers and spend their days reviewing AI-generated code and fixing its errors. This has also changed the requirements for a job as a programmer as companies put AI capabilities to the test. This also means that developers are increasingly taking on multiple roles and working across disciplines.
We want to hear from you. Contact us at jherbst@insider.com and rscammell@insider.com to let us know what you think of the series and what we should write about next.
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A big question is what these changes mean for those just entering the profession. Often, senior engineers get the most out of AI because they have the technical experience to understand what AI does. If AI takes over more of the work that young talent once did – debugging, building simple functions – how can humans gain the same level of technical expertise?
There are lessons for all employees
AI billing came first to software engineers and led to job disruptions, if not job destruction.
As a result, developers quickly learned new skills, focused on the more human and less replaceable parts of their work, and in some cases decided they could make a bigger impact elsewhere.
There is no guarantee that the rest of the white-collar workforce will be equally exposed to AI. Code is right or wrong. Other tasks are often more chaotic.
As our colleague Alistair Barr has written, AI is now everyone’s job. But even if other workplaces don’t change so fundamentally, there are lessons for the broader workforce about flexibility, adaptability and the value of our work.
The rest of us should pay attention.
You can read the rest of the series below. If any of these posts resonate with you or you would like to share your own story about how AI is transforming your industry, please share your thoughts in the comments section below or email us at rscammell@insider.com And jherbst@insider.com.
Credits
Editor: Julia Herbst, Robert Scammell
Reporter: Ana Altchek, Henry Chandonnet, Shubhangi Goel, Juliana Kaplan, Hugh Langley, Sarah E. Needleman, Tim Paradis, Thibault Spirlet, Jacob Zinkula
Art: Bryan Erickson, Rebecca Zisser
Video: Nicole Forero
Data visualization: Madison Hoff, Andy Kiersz, Randy Yeip
Additional editing support: Mary Hanbury, Bartie Scott, Steven Tweedie
https://www.businessinsider.com/great-coding-reset-ai-software-engineering-2026-7
