Computer Science Was Never About Software Engineering

Nathan Wilmers, Regina Catipon, Maxim Massenkoff, and Peter McCrory, in an Anthropic research article: How has AI restructured work and employment at Anthropic? As a company at the frontier of AI adoption, Anthropic could be a leading indicator of how AI will shift work organization, hiring, and labor demand across the economy. Anthropic has been hiring for a smaller share of junior technical positions. This occurred as hours worked by AI agents relative to employees rapidly expanded. By August interactive AI agent hours outnumbered employees’ 6 to 1. As AI agents diffused through the company, Anthropic began producing more code per person, closing more sales per rep, and processing more contracts. Following the same employee over time, output rose as they adopted new AI tools. This acceleration makes human attention the bottleneck for agent output. Even among non-technical employees, reading all the output of their Claude agents would take half their work week. In response, employees…