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As the tech industry continues to scale AI use, some companies are hitting snags not in the technology itself, but in the human workforce developing and working alongside AI agents.<\/p>\n
Fiona Fung, the engineering leader of Anthropic\u2019s Claude Code and Cowork teams, said in a recent episode of Lenny\u2019s Podcast<\/em> that agentic AI use in the workplace has increased so much it was making employees\u2019 work more solitary, pushing the company to intervene with other team-building activities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe other thing that we found interesting on the Claude Code team is, after a while, we felt it could start being a lonely experience because we all started just working with our agents so much,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Anthropic began implementing hackathons \u201cjust to make sure we\u2019re interacting together as a team,\u201d as well as pair programming lunches for employees to share how they\u2019re using Claude Code, Fung said. She deemed both interventions successful.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we do pairwise programming, we actually learn so much from each other,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery time I watch someone work, I learn something myself as well.\u201d<\/p>\n An Anthropic spokesperson said the company is paying close attention to how its AI tools impact how employees work together.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing engineers find new ways to learn from and build alongside one another, in what\u2019s really an evolution of pair programming,\u201d the spokesperson said in a statement to Fortune<\/em>. \u201cWhere pairing was once about working through a tough problem together, it\u2019s now increasingly about seeing how a colleague uses these new tools and systems differently than you might, so even as more of the work shifts toward collaborating with agents, engineers keep learning from one another. Sharing how our own work is changing, including the hard parts, helps us build tools that best serve the people using them.\u201d<\/p>\n While Anthropic leaders like Fung said the company has adapted to challenges tech employees have faced as they increase AI use, the loneliness some tech employees are facing may shed light on a larger morale issue in a rapidly changing industry. There have been about 120,000 tech layoffs in 2026 so far, nearly equaling 2025\u2019s total. Some of the companies driving the layoffs, including Meta, which let go of 8,000 workers this year, have cited AI as the reason behind the reductions.<\/p>\n Many tech employees left unscathed by layoffs are still reeling from changes to their work, as well as the anxiety these reductions and AI advancements bring. On the social media site Blind, a platform where verified anonymous users can discuss their workplaces, tech workers lamented low morale following layoff announcements and geopolitical uncertainty, as well as a changing culture of employees becoming less critical of leadership, which they link to risks of less innovation.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole mood has changed,\u201d Sunguk Moon, cofounder and CEO of Blind, told the New York Times<\/em> last month. \u201cIt went from personal career planning to mass anxiety. To users talking about how hard it is to stay motivated when they might lose their job very soon, maybe tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Meta has seen firsthand how morale can roil the workplace. In an internal email, chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth said the company\u2019s communication surrounding the restructuring of its AI division was \u201catrocious,\u201d Wired<\/em> reported last week. The memo came on the tail of members of the 6,500-person Applied AI team expressing frustration toward their work to improve the company\u2019s AI models, which they said was made up of menial tasks with minimal interaction with other employees. Meta declined comment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve undermined the trust you have that your specific expertise and contribution will be valued, that you will grow and advance your career, and that this will be a place where you can actually have an impact,\u201d Bosworth wrote. \u201cWe shook up the management structure that was providing you stability while rapid changes in strategy, including the boom\/bust cycle of hiring, left entire teams in the lurch.\u201d<\/p>\n Bosworth said the company will take steps to be \u201cfun and enjoyable\u201d for employees, such as increasing travel budgets and social event spending, as well as \u201cimproving microkitchens\u201d where workers can take breaks and eat snacks.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope we can rekindle the best of the culture we joined,\u201d Bosworth wrote.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, said employee unrest in the tech industry more broadly is a result of the \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d tradition that often leaves workers vulnerable.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tech industry has said people are the most important asset, but they never act that way,\u201d Pfeffer told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cMany people, I think, still go into jobs believing that their employers care about them and will take care of them, and so they are of course disappointed when they find that their employers actually don\u2019t care about them or will take care of them.\u201d<\/p>\n The introduction of AI may complicate morale concerns, particularly because some of AI\u2019s greatest stalwarts\u2014the engineers designing and training it\u2014may be experiencing misgivings about the technology\u2019s advancements. While these workers are designing and optimizing the AI tools of tomorrow, there is also concern these tools will also replace them. A Gallup report published this month found that among U.S. tech workers who use AI at least monthly, the likelihood of being laid off is about 6%, a rate that triples to 18% among workers who use the technology less frequently.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that as tools come in, it often restructures jobs: Certain tasks disappear, other tasks appear. That is a stressful time, right?\u201d Neil Thompson, an assistant professor of innovation and strategy at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cPeople don\u2019t know what those new tasks are going to look like. They can see old tasks being threatened, and that can also make it more intimidating, particularly when you have quite impressive results coming out.\u201d<\/p>\n Anthropic has explored this tension in its own employees. A report from the company published earlier this month looked at recursive self-improvement, or AI\u2019s ability to better itself with its own capabilities. One worker expressed concern with the limitation of their own role in developing this technology.<\/p>\n \u201cOn days where everything works well, I can\u2019t help but think nothing I do matters, everything is automated and better and faster than I ever will be,\u201d the employee said. \u201cBut then there are days where everything breaks and I don\u2019t understand why and I realize I have no idea what I\u2019ve been up to anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n The report also published comments from employees who said Claude has augmented their work and left humans in the driver\u2019s seat of selecting the direction for models to move. Anthropic touted Claude\u2019s ability to ship more than 800 application programming interface (API) error fixes in April, a task the company said would have taken a human four years to complete.<\/p>\n There are ways to ease the feeling of threat some workers have in navigating AI advancements, Thompson said. Companies can prepare workers through reskilling, but also by being transparent in changes that may happen to labor as a result of automation, both for better and for worse. Historically, Thompson said, this has looked like fewer experts in certain positions, with wages rising for these workers, and in other areas, the number of roles expanding, with wages decreasing.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a tough thing, but often there are more opportunities for people to enter that field, because now more people are capable of doing that,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cIf we think about the morale of people in these areas, I think one thing that can help is to say, like, this is not all doom and gloom.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Anthropic #engineering #leader #Claude #code #employees #work #lonely #experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the tech industry continues to scale AI use, some companies are hitting snags not in the technology itself, but in the human workforce developing and working alongside AI agents.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[536,328,6853,997,1468,1911,2831,3293,10948,400,433,1105,10947],"class_list":["post-8882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-anthropic","tag-automation","tag-claude","tag-code","tag-employees","tag-engineering","tag-experience","tag-leader","tag-lonely","tag-meta","tag-tech-workers","tag-work","tag-work-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cracks in tech industry morale<\/h2>\n
Making sense of tech workers\u2019 AI anxieties<\/h2>\n