Game On: Workers Try to Outdo AI
An increasing number of employees find themselves working around the clock to prove they are more valuable than AI. Are leaders creating a “rudderless ship?”
It’s 4 AM. Do you know where some of your workers are?
They may be toiling away behind their desk, in a desperate effort to prove to their company that they are more valuable than AI. Indeed, there is growing evidence that where the technology has most taken root, some workers are burning the midnight oil—not to innovate, but simply to prove they’re still essential. Stories have circulated about software coders working 16-hour days—sometimes until as late as 4 AM—to build and monitor AI agents. Some firms have even created internal counseling programs to allow employees to vent about AI-induced burnout. According to research from the University of California, Berkeley, AI adoption appears to be creating an unsustainable burden in some cases.
It’s a crushing irony, say experts, that AI, whose evangelists promised it would save workers countless work hours—freeing them to be more productive and innovative—is doing precisely the opposite. But as AI-related layoffs make the news, the stakes of the competition between human and machine are mounting. From a leadership perspective, experts say, it’s a lose-lose proposition. “You have got to move away from ‘AI versus colleague’ to ‘AI plus colleague,’” says Dennis Deans, Korn Ferry’s global human resources business partner.
Of course, it’s not unusual for ambitious professionals—software engineers, lawyers, investment bankers, and others—to regularly work 12 hours or more. In some workplace cultures, people, especially junior employees, are expected to work exceptionally long hours for weeks at a time to meet project deadlines. In some parts of the world, the 9-9-6 schedule (work 9 AM until 9 PM six days a week) is venerated.
But the AI era has brought multiple developments that make many workers fearful that they have no choice but to work more. They’ve seen their organizations wipe out layers of management, eliminating potential career opportunities. They’re aware that numerous leaders, both inside and outside the technology industry, view AI primarily as a way to reduce payroll. For organizations that frame AI as better than human talent—and a replacement for it—“the natural reaction from people is to compete and show their value,” says Flo Falayi, a Korn Ferry senior client partner in its Leadership and Executive Development practice.
An AI agent can do, in minutes, an assignment an employee has devoted hours to—and potentially spent years developing expertise in. A client of David Napeloni, Korn Ferry’s vice president of client services for global RPO, can now, thanks to AI, write code in three months that previously would have required years. It’s great, the client says, but he constantly needs to remind his bosses that the work couldn’t have been done without him, the human being. “There’s a level of validation that’s necessary,” Napeloni says.
But many employees, rather than feeling liberated to do higher-value work, are reckoning with both a sense of loss and the fear that they are no longer productive. “Our professional identity is being changed,” says Lisa Harrison, a Korn Ferry senior client partner in the firm’s Healthcare Advisory practice.
What’s missing here, say experts, is firms encouraging human partnership with AI, rather than competition. The C-suite, they say, needs to be transparent in explaining to employees not only the organization’s AI strategy, but also how the technology can help them. Workers need to feel safe to experiment and learn without worrying about getting it wrong. AI should be something teams use together, rather than something imposed on them. “If you only talk about how AI will disrupt jobs, people will make stuff up, and it’s never positive,” says Bryan Ackermann, Korn Ferry’s head of AI strategy and transformation.
If a leader doesn’t do that, then they’re failing, Deans says. They’ll have an organization filled with employees trying to prove their worth, with no overarching mission. “They’ll have a rudderless ship,” he says.
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