AI has an outsized impact on how people feel about their work, splitting the tech workforce roughly in half between those who feel amplified and energized and those who feel destabilized or diminished.
Noam Segal's survey found AI's effect on professional identity dwarfs other factors like role, company, or seniority, splitting tech workers into roughly equal camps of amplified vs. destabilized/diminished. ✦ AI generated
Noam Segal · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-07-12 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 7:27
“What's kind of the like the big picture takeaway from the report overall?”
Half of the people in tech are feeling incredible, energized, amplified, excited about the technology and the future of, you know, their role. And the other half feel like the future is unclear. They feel destabilized. They feel diminished.
verbatim transcript · starts at 7:27
7:10work at. Whereas the big picture in this survey and and I think the the thing that stood out to us the most is how bifocated the workforce is right now. And what you're going to see is that AI has an outlier level outsiz impact on how people feel about their work more so than any other uh characteristic of their job whether it's their role, the company they work for, the company size,
7:46their level etc. Half of the people in tech are feeling incredible, energized, amplified, excited about the technology and the future of, you know, their role. And the other half feel like the future is unclear. They feel destabilized. They feel diminished. Um, other negative emotions around that. It's uh it's a very interesting picture that really cuts the tech workforce in half and that's what we'll see in a second.
8:22>> It feels so like yes, this feels correct as we we look at people in tech. Like it just uh is so clear that this happening and what's interesting is it's 50/50 in the results. I didn't expect to be so even. That was a really interesting takeaway. >> It's 50/50. When you dive a little bit deeper into the data, there is some nuance there. So, we're looking at this
8:42slide with the question that you and I both decided to answer the survey, which is, how has AI shifted your professional identity, if at all? And I'll actually call out first of all that only 3% of people reported that AI hasn't shifted their identity. So, clearly AI has changed how we each view ourselves. That's first of all. But then to your point, the most prominent thing here is
9:07that 50% of people in tech are feeling amplified. They feel like they can do more. They feel like they can do better. It's a wholly positive uh emotion. And it's great. It's great. It's great for them. But the other half of tech divide into three distinct groups. The first group is people who feel like their role is being redefined. They don't, that group doesn't actually have that much clarity or specific positive
- ·AI's effect on identity outweighs role, company, seniority
- ·Workforce splits into roughly equal camps
- ·One half: energized, amplified, excited
- ·Other half: destabilized, diminished, unclear future
- ·Split cuts across all job types, not just certain roles
- ·Impact on morale outsized vs. other workplace factors
- ·Same technology, opposite emotional responses