Generative AI is showing early evidence of productivity gains for software developers, but concerns persist regarding workforce disruption and deskilling. We describe our research with 21 developers at the cutting edge of using AI, summarizing 12 of their work goals we uncovered, together with 75 associated tasks and the skills & knowledge for each, illustrating how developers use AI at work. From all of these, we distilled our findings in the form of 5 insights. We found that the skills & knowledge to be a successful AI-enhanced developer are organized into four domains (using Generative AI effectively, core software engineering, adjacent engineering, and adjacent non-engineering) deployed at critical junctures throughout a 6-step task workflow. In order to "future proof" developers for this age of AI, on-the-job learning initiatives and computer science degree programs will need to target both "soft" skills and the technical skills & knowledge in all four domains to reskill, upskill and safeguard against deskilling.
@article{arxiv.2506.00202,
title = {What do professional software developers need to know to succeed in an age of Artificial Intelligence?},
author = {Matthew Kam and Cody Miller and Miaoxin Wang and Abey Tidwell and Irene A. Lee and Joyce Malyn-Smith and Beatriz Perez and Vikram Tiwari and Joshua Kenitzer and Andrew Macvean and Erin Barrar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.00202},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
12 pages, 4 figures, software engineering education track of the 2025 ACM international conference on the foundations of software engineering, includes supplementary material i.e. full 50-page occupational profile of the AI-enhanced software developer