Note

Most companies didn't replace their junior engineers with AI.
They just gave their senior engineers a second job.

Published

Colin Whitfield · Founder and Operating Partner · 1 min read

Cut roles. Hand out AI. Bank the savings.

That is the market’s AI plan right now. And for most software companies, it is backfiring.

Pull requests are up. But releases haven't moved—because your most experienced engineers are now spending their days reviewing massive AI pull requests and fixing defects that AI-written tests missed.

You can’t fix a delivery model by starting with the tool. You have to start with the work.

  • Page 1: AI and the work. Companies are cutting engineers for AI, but the work doesn't go away. Korn Ferry surveyed more than 16,000 professionals this year.
  • Page 2: The market's AI plan. Cut roles, hand out AI, bank the savings, set against what Korn Ferry found: motivation down 9 points in a year, and more than half of managers exhausted.
  • Page 5: Sort the work first. Every task the juniors did goes into one of three piles: stop, human, or AI plus human. Then size the team to the work that survives.
  • Page 6: One job per role. Senior engineers own architecture and review; the engineering manager is no longer the shock absorber; two options for the junior work.
  • Page 7: Redesign the review. The author owns every line, pull requests stay small, review time is booked, people design the tests, and nothing ships without a written definition of done.
  • Page 8: Then place AI. AI drafts boilerplate, first-pass review and release notes, and a person approves; people decide architecture, test design and what ships.

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First published on LinkedIn on 28 October 2026. The original post.

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