{"id":512508,"date":"2026-03-03T22:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/512508\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T22:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:52:09","slug":"why-developers-using-ai-are-working-longer-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/512508\/","title":{"rendered":"Why developers using AI are working longer hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Software engineering was supposed to be artificial intelligence\u2019s easiest win. Today companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have all released AI products<\/a> geared specifically to coding. And a survey of nearly 5,000 technology professionals<\/a> released in a report last year by Google\u2019s DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) team found that 90 percent of respondents said they were using AI at work\u2014with more than 80 percent saying the technology had boosted their productivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see a large majority of folks that are relying on AI to get their job done, at least a moderate amount, which is really fascinating,\u201d says Nathen Harvey, who leads the DORA team.<\/p>\n

AI can generate code for everything from Web and mobile apps to data management tools. It often automates some of the tedious elements of the job, such as building testing infrastructure and updating software to run on new devices and systems. In some cases, even inexperienced developers can create working prototypes simply by describing their intentions to AI systems in a process often called \u201cvibe coding<\/a>,\u201d a term coined by OpenAI co-founder and researcher Andrej Karpathy. But writing code is only part of the job; developers still have to verify that it does what it\u2019s supposed to and fix it if it fails.<\/p>\n

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Another finding from the DORA report was that while individual coder effectiveness appeared to rise with the use of AI, so, too, did \u201csoftware delivery instability\u201d\u2014an assessment of how frequently code needed to be rolled back or patched after release to address unexpected issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you use more AI, you\u2019re more likely to roll back changes that you\u2019ve pushed into production,\u201d Harvey says. \u201cAnd this, obviously, is something that you want to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as it becomes increasingly adept at writing code, AI doesn\u2019t eliminate the need for human software engineering. Developers often still need to craft bespoke code\u2014or at least tweak an AI tool\u2019s output\u2014to handle unusual cases or specific business needs that might not be reflected in AI training data. They also still need to carefully confirm<\/a> that machine-generated programs behave exactly as intended and meet company standards.<\/p>\n

AI tools don\u2019t automatically shorten the workday. In some workplaces, studies suggest, AI has intensified pressure to move faster than ever.<\/p>\n

If employers don\u2019t manage its effects, AI may even exacerbate stress and burnout among software engineers. In a report published in the Harvard Business Review in February<\/a>, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley\u2019s Haas School of Business found that employees at one U.S. tech company took on more tasks, worked at a faster pace and worked more hours after adopting AI. Even without the company mandating use of the technology, employees began prompting AI during lunch, breaks and meetings, with some finding former downtimes less refreshing. There\u2019s a risk that initial excitement and productivity boosts could give way to fatigue, lower-quality output and greater employee turnover, the researchers warned.<\/p>\n

This pressure isn\u2019t happening in a vacuum. Following years of industry-wide layoffs and corporate mandates for efficiency, AI is often deployed alongside the expectation that those left behind will do more with less.<\/p>\n

Additionally, a report assessing more than 500 developers<\/a>, released late last year by Multitudes<\/a>, a New Zealand\u2013based company that helps businesses track and optimize software engineering practices, found indications that AI can expand worker productivity but also working hours. On average, engineers merged 27.2 percent more \u201cpull requests\u201d\u2014packages of code that were approved for insertion into existing software projects. But they also experienced a 19.6 percent rise in \u201cout-of-hour commits\u201d\u2014submissions of coding work outside of their ordinary schedules. That could be a sign of problems to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that out-of-hours work is going up, it\u2019s not good for the person,\u201d says Multitudes founder and CEO Lauren Peate. \u201cIt can lead to burnout.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Multitudes report doesn\u2019t definitively prove that AI directly caused the measured changes, but Peate says interviews suggest that the observed changes in hours among engineers are likely a sign that businesses expect greater productivity from employees in the AI era.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were feeling additional pressure to get more work done, and it looks like that was contributing to them putting in more hours,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

While some research<\/a> has suggested that less experienced developers might be among those who benefit the most from AI\u2019s assistance, and vibe coding<\/a> can let people with a minimal programming background build programs that run, a recent assessment from Anthropic<\/a> suggests that overreliance on AI may affect the development of coding skills.<\/p>\n

In a report released in January, Anthropic researchers found that software engineers working with a new software library saw a small, statistically insignificant boost in speed when they solved a task with the aid of AI compared with a control group working without AI assistance. When the coders were quizzed about the software library after the task, however, the group given AI assistance scored 17 percent lower than the AI-free group. Those who asked questions of the AI rather than just relying on it to generate code generally performed better, but the researchers raised concerns that using AI to simply complete tasks as quickly as possible under workplace pressure could be harmful to engineers\u2019 professional development.<\/p>\n

Additionally, they noted, the biggest gap in quiz performance was in questions related to debugging code\u2014the process of finding and fixing the flaws that make code malfunction. In other words, junior developers who rely too much on AI might have a harder time not only writing code on their own but also understanding and putting the finishing touches on the code they generated in the first place. In a statement to Scientific American, Anthropic researcher Judy Hanwen Shen said the goal \u201cshouldn\u2019t be to use AI to avoid cognitive effort<\/a>\u2014it should be to use AI to deepen it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Already, the U.C. Berkeley researchers noted, engineers can find themselves helping co-workers who\u2019ve created incomplete software solutions through vibe coding. And some open-source projects<\/a> have reported a rise in low-quality<\/a>, AI-driven submissions that sap core developers\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

That comes after a 2025 Harvard Business School working paper indicated<\/a> that AI can lead to open-source developers shifting their time from handling project management tasks, such as reviewing code contributions and maintaining lists of issues for contributors to fix, to generating code themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can do it by yourself now, so there\u2019s not a lot of need to interact much with others,\u201d says Manuel Hoffmann, a co-author of the paper and an assistant professor of information systems at the University of California, Irvine\u2019s Paul Merage School of Business. \u201cAnd that’s not necessarily a bad thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, such use of AI may limit another channel for less experienced programmers to hone their skills, develop professional networks and expand their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

And as AI redefines what productivity means, workplace structures that prevent burnout, keep workloads manageable, and provide avenues for advancement and training may be more important than ever.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019ve got great things happening, and you add some AI to the mix, they\u2019re probably going to get better,\u201d Harvey says. \u201cAnd when you have painful things that are happening, [and] you add some AI to the mix, [you\u2019re] probably going to feel that pain a little bit more acutely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Software engineering was supposed to be artificial intelligence\u2019s easiest win. Today companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-512508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}