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There is evidence that technology workers feel pressure to appear AI-savvy, but the available surveys do not establish that developers mainly use AI to impress their bosses—or that most fear losing their jobs if they do not. A 2025 Pluralsight survey, reported by ITPro, found that 79% of surveyed technology workers said they had pretended to know more about AI than they did. That points to workplace pressure and signaling, not a proven motive for using AI tools.
What the closest survey found
ITPro reported on April 4, 2025, that a Pluralsight survey of 1,200 technology workers and executives in the United States and United Kingdom found 79% of technology workers said they had pretended to know more about AI than they actually did. The finding concerns claimed AI knowledge; it does not show that those workers used AI to impress a manager, or that this was their main reason for using it. ITPro’s report on the Pluralsight survey.
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The same report says 95% of technology executives believed AI skills were crucial for job security. That is executives’ belief, not evidence that AI skills guarantee job protection or that workers without them will be laid off. The original survey questionnaire and detailed methodology are not established in the reporting, so the figures should not be treated as answers to more specific questions than those reported.
Do most developers fear losing their jobs if they do not use AI?
The available findings do not establish that most developers fear job loss for not using AI. Stack Overflow’s 2025 developer survey asked whether AI was a threat to respondents’ current jobs: 64% said it was not, down from 68% in 2024. The 2025 result reflects respondents’ perception of a threat, not a forecast of actual job losses. Stack Overflow reports 36,000 responses to this question. Stack Overflow 2025 AI survey results.
That result does not contradict Pluralsight’s finding about executives’ beliefs. The surveys covered different groups and measured different things: workers’ self-described exaggeration of AI knowledge, executives’ views of job security, and developers’ perceptions of AI as a threat to their current jobs. Their percentages cannot be combined into one estimate of how developers feel.
AI use is widespread, but adoption is not the same as trust
Separate surveys indicate that AI tools are now common among developers, while also showing that many users verify outputs rather than trust them automatically.
- Stack Overflow, 2026: Its survey received 30,903 responses across 169 countries. The overview reports that 80% of respondents used AI at least an hour per day, while 48% trusted AI only when they could easily verify its output. These figures describe the survey’s respondents and the measures reported by Stack Overflow; they are not a universal estimate for all developers. Stack Overflow 2026 survey overview.
- HackerRank, 2025: Its report says 97% of surveyed developers used at least one AI assistant, 29% of developers’ code was AI-generated on average, and 85% said AI helped them complete projects faster. These are HackerRank survey findings and should not be generalized to every developer or workplace. HackerRank Developer Skills Report 2025.
Frequent use can coexist with caution: developers may use AI for suitable tasks and check its output before relying on it. Adoption figures alone do not explain whether someone is motivated by curiosity, speed, employer expectations, or a desire to look current.
Why workers may hide AI use
Pluralsight’s report, as quoted by ITPro, says: “Two in three people have noticed coworkers use AI without admitting it, while one in three report hidden AI use being widespread in their workplace.” The report also states: “With this stigma, workers often use… AI tools for work projects without giving credit or acknowledgement for its use.” Those statements suggest that norms around disclosure may shape how people talk about AI at work. They do not show how often managers actually penalize employees for using it.
An experiment from Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab offers evidence of one possible social cost. In a controlled experiment run March 30–April 7, 2026, 961 full-time U.S. knowledge workers evaluated identical written work, with disclosure of AI assistance varied. Participants told that AI had helped create the work rated the hypothetical colleague 10 times lazier and were 24 percentage points less likely to recommend that person for high-visibility projects. These are experimental judgments about a hypothetical colleague and written work—not observed promotion, hiring, or firing outcomes. Atlassian Teamwork Lab’s account of AI stigma at work.
Atlassian Teamwork Lab head Molly Sands summarized the issue as: “This isn’t a technology problem; it’s a social and cultural one.” The experiment suggests that disclosure can affect perceptions in a particular scenario, but it cannot tell us how common that reaction is among actual managers or whether it changes real career outcomes.
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What developers can take from the findings
The evidence supports a more measured conclusion than the headline’s strongest claim: some technology workers say they exaggerate their AI knowledge, executives associate AI skills with job security, and many developers report using AI tools. None of those findings proves that most developers use AI primarily to impress their bosses or that using it prevents job loss.
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Quick Recap
- Build verifiable competence. Being able to explain what a tool did, check its output, and identify its limits is more meaningful than merely appearing familiar with AI.
- Follow workplace rules. Check your employer’s policies on approved tools, sensitive data, code review, and disclosure. Survey findings do not override those requirements.
- Be clear about assistance when it matters. If a team, client, or policy expects disclosure, say how AI contributed rather than presenting generated work as entirely unaided.
- Separate skill development from job guarantees. Survey respondents’ beliefs about the value of AI skills are not proof that acquiring them secures a role. Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar said in the 2026 survey overview: “AI has the potential to reshape the entire software and product development life cycle, but realizing that potential requires a foundational change to workflows, roles, and ownership.” The point is about broader changes to work, not a promise that tool use alone protects an individual job.
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