AI Isn’t “Taking Your Job” Yet. It’s Taking Pieces of It — And That Changes Everything

New York — AI probably won’t take your job anytime soon. At least not all of it. That’s the uncomfortable truth behind the latest layoff headlines. AI was the top reason companies cited for job cuts in April for the second month in a row, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Block just laid off 40% of its staff. Coinbase cut 14%. Cloudflare says its AI use jumped 600% in three months while headcount shrank. Yet most experts insist AI isn’t replacing entire positions. It’s replacing tasks. **“You Can’t Fire One Quarter of Lisa”** “It’s very few jobs that are actually entirely automated away,” said Alexis Krivkovich, a senior partner at McKinsey. Their research says AI can technically automate 57% of work activities. But that 57% is scattered across “pieces and parts” of different jobs. Nitin Seth, cofounder of consulting firm Incedo, puts it bluntly: “You can’t take one quarter of Lisa, one quarter of Jessica, one quarter of Nitin and make it one person.” His clients boost productivity 20-25% with AI without cutting staff at the same scale. Because AI only handles fragments of roles. Tell that to the engineers at Block and Coinbase. AI now lets them “ship in days what used to take a team weeks,” Coinbase’s CEO said. So the team gets smaller. **From “Software Engineer” to “Builder”** No industry feels this shift more than tech. 90% of tech workers use AI on the job, Google found. 84% of developers use AI tools or plan to, says Stack Overflow. But coding was never the whole job. Engineers review code, design systems, troubleshoot, decide what to build. As AI writes more boilerplate, those other skills matter more. Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code at Anthropic, thinks the job title itself might die. “By the end of the year, we’re going to start to see the idea of software engineering go away,” he told CNN. The new title? Maybe “builder.” Writing code becomes a smaller part of it. Sujata Sridharan, a software engineer for nearly a decade, lives that transition. She uses AI daily, but her job is still problem solving and critical thinking. The execution is just different now: part writing code, part prompting AI. “The skills that are actually required have shifted to, are you able to recognize what is the right code quality?” **The Layoffs Are Real, Even If the Narrative Isn’t** Let’s not sugarcoat it. AI has been cited in more than 49,000 job cuts so far this year. Companies are figuring out what AI can and can’t do, then recalibrating jobs around the human parts. Thousands get cut in the process. Dan Priest, PwC’s US chief AI officer, says whole job categories aren’t currently at risk. But he admits “some job disruption” is coming. And the tech keeps moving upmarket. Anthropic just launched AI agents built for finance work — crafting pitchbooks, writing credit memos. Tasks that used to require junior analysts. “It starts at the bottom, and it keeps going up,” said Umesh Ramakrishnan, cofounder of executive search firm Kingsley Gate. “And I don’t know where it stops.” **So What Now?** Microsoft’s recent report on AI at work found most companies haven’t adjusted employee metrics to match how jobs are changing. They’re still figuring out which human skills matter. For workers, the message is mixed. Your job probably isn’t vanishing tomorrow. But the parts of it that AI can do? Those might. And if enough pieces disappear, companies will redraw the org chart without you in it. The anxiety is real. The black-and-white headlines are wrong. The truth is in the gray area — and it’s where your career now lives. Has AI changed your day-to-day work? Are you doing more with fewer people on your team? Share your experience in the comments.