Anthropic: junior share of technical staff fell from 21% to 14%, and agent working hours reached six times staff hours
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
According to Anthropic's own data, deep adoption of agents raises output and cuts hiring of junior technical staff.
In its own study based on internal data (employment, SI use, output metrics, surveys, calendars, hiring records and 17 interviews), Anthropic reports that since early 2025 the share of junior employees in technical departments has fallen from 21% to 14%, and the share of juniors among technical hires from 27% to 9%. The technical departments' share of staff fell over the year from 61% to 56%; the company ties this to the growth of business functions and to non-technical employees now creating software too. By August, working hours of agents launched by employees were six times the employees' own hours; commits per engineer rose about fivefold in six months. The median employee spends 20% more time in meetings than a year ago: the company explains this by the need for trust, accountability and in-person coordination. The authors caution that adoption of SI tools is not random and effect estimates may be biased; the data cover one company.
Sources 2