The AI year - how we work, hire and grow now

For a lot of teams, this was the year AI stopped being an experiment and started being part of the job. Shipping got faster, but so did the pace, the pressure and the pile of code waiting for review.

Drawing on Lookahead's 2026 research with people across Australian tech community and interviews with over 20 tech leaders, Fiona will share what's really changing: how the work feels, which skills are rising and fading, how roles are blending across engineering, product and design, and what it all means for hiring and careers.

Transcript

1. The AI year How we work, hire and grow now Fiona Chan - Partner & Technical Recruiter
2. How we are feeling?
3. Fear Excitement Exhaustion
4. 80% feel positive about AI’s impact on their role only 43% of one-word answers were positive
5. excited, empowered exhausted, tired and stressed
6. State of Devs: “AI tools have had a positive impact overall on my mental state” 23% agree / strongly agree 46% disagree / strongly disagree https://2026.stateofdevs.com/en-US/ai/
7. Is AI making us more productive?
8. 92% ship faster than they did a year ago
9. AI made building cheap. The expensive mistake now is building the wrong thing.
10. 57% more time in code review 45% code quality ⬇ 33% code quality ⬆
11. Harvard, 2026 +30% code written No change +49% time in in work code review delivered fi fi https:// on.ac/jelly sh.pdf
12. We've made code cheap to write, not cheap to check.
13. Impact in workplace a a a a a 68% worklo d & pressure ⬆ 44% job s tisf ction ⬇ 35% job s tisf ction ⬆
14. Code qu lity got better 28% 44% Job s tisf ction went up 30% 47% ff Director level nd up a ICs + m n gers a a a a a Same year, di erent experience
15. a a Company size matters Under 50 people 200+ people Positive bout AI 89% 73% Worklo d went up 60% 80%
16. Biggest fear a 36% over-reli nce & losing their skills 10% job security
17. “Many of us became software engineers because we found our identity in building things.” Annie Vella https://annievella.com/posts/the-software-engineering-identity-crisis/
18. Skills & Roles
19. Skills - grown and declined • System design - 52% • AI/ML fund ment ls - 26% a • Testing & v lid tion - 35% a • Product thinking - 55% a Declined a Grown
20. Roles Product Design • 40% - seeing Product M n ger ship code • 38% - seeing designer ship code • 100% re seeing roles blend a a a Engineering
21. Interview process
22. 77% of people involved in hiring said interview process has changed a (mostly on live coding interview & t ke-home test)
23. “We’re sorry we made you grind LeetCode.” Vivek Ravisankar, Co-founder of HackerRank
24. How to test for product thinking?
25. Job search
26. The 3 Ps: Passion, Presence, Project
27. Passion, Presence, Project • Experiment with AI - be cre tive with it. H ve n opinion on your tools. • Pick 1 -2 meetups nd ttend them consistently. T lk / write bout your le rnings. a a a a a a a a a a a a ff a a • Build something nd t lk bout the outcome: who used it, wh t ch nged, wh t you'd do di erently
28. Wrap up
29. 1. Solve the right problem 2. B l nce speed with qu lity a a a 3. Invest in people
30. The tools changed. The principles didn't.
31. Fiona Chan - Partner & Technical Recruiter ion @look he d.com. u a a a f a a linkedin.com/in/ ion kych n/ a f Full report