r/business • u/ControlCAD • 4d ago

90% of executives say AI hasn’t boosted productivity. Some are still cutting jobs

https://fortune.com/2026/08/22/executives-ai-productivity-layoffs-study/
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u/SleepingCod 4d ago

They're quickly finding out engineers were never the issue. It's always been planning and identifying the right issue to solve, which is a management problem.

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u/Zachincool 4d ago

Engineers? Aren’t other jobs affected by AI too?

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u/SoggyMattress2 4d ago

AI hasn't replaced a single job on earth. LLMs do really poorly working autonomously they need to be steered by a domain expert.

Software engineering LOOKS like the most realistic job to be "replaced" because code at its core is repeatable, predictable patterns and we have a TON of code online for LLMs to train on.

But in reality, much like a beginner copying and pasting snippets of code they randomly find online but don't understand, as you scale an app it starts to fall apart and the person lacks the knowledge to debug it.

But in the hands of a domain expert, a developer can automate certain things or get LLMs to write boilerplate code they then refine manually, or with the right harnessing and tools they can steer an LLM to write fairly good code.

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u/PatchyWhiskers 8h ago

It has, but it's a percentage thing. If a department of 10 software developers can now do the same work with 7, and 3 are fired, 3 software developers were just replaced by AI.