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AI reshapes tech jobs as developers, planners focus on human advantages

Published: 05 Mar. 2026, 13:03 Updated: 06 Mar. 2026, 15:29

Commuters walk to work at the Gwanghwamun intersection in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Feb. 19. [YONHAP]

AI is pushing IT workers to rethink their roles at work. As AI increasingly handles the coding and debugging tasks once done by junior developers, many professionals are shifting their focus away from purely technical skills toward areas such as judgment, writing and specialized knowledge that machines struggle to replicate.

Workers across industries feel the pressure to keep up with AI. A survey of 209 employees conducted by technology company Wanted Lab at the request of the JoongAng Ilbo showed that over 90 percent of office workers are willing to spend their own money to learn AI skills to strengthen their competitiveness.

The results show that many employees feel a growing sense of urgency about AI’s impact on their jobs. Junior developers in particular face mounting pressure, as AI can now easily generate code and fix errors — tasks that were once handled mainly by entry-level programmers.

Yet many professionals are not simply trying to compete with AI by improving their technical skills.

Instead, a different pattern is emerging in the IT industry. While marketers learn prompt engineering and automation tools — skills once mainly used by developers — software developers and product planners spend more time studying writing and specialized industry knowledge.

They seek to move into areas that require interpretation, judgment and planning, where human insight still offers an advantage over AI.

“The roles of planners and developers were clearly separated before,” said Jeong Da-hae, a former service planner. “Now those boundaries are becoming blurred. If you put an idea into ChatGPT, it can write the code for you, so it becomes important to have capabilities that others cannot easily intrude upon."

Jeong previously worked as a service planner at the Juspeace Foundation, established by singer G-Dragon, while pursuing a doctoral program related to cultural policy. After completing the doctorate, Jeong plans to shift toward research work. Jeong believes deeper expertise will provide stronger long-term competitiveness than simply acquiring new technical skills.

Hong, a 50-year-old data architecture specialist at a major conglomerate, emphasized that humans must focus on the structural limits of AI.

“AI ultimately produces the most common answer because it relies on statistics, so it inevitably lacks diversity,” Hong said.

Hong also deliberately reads encyclopedias and books across various fields to build a broader knowledge base.

“Human competitiveness will come from thinking that differentiates itself from AI’s standardized outputs, so I am looking for a breakthrough through humanities studies," Hong said.

The OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen with output from ChatGPT on March 21, 2023. [AP/YONHAP]

Nondevelopers, meanwhile, search for ways to use AI more effectively.

Yoo, a 32-year-old service planner who has worked for seven years at an IT startup, even joined a community where members regularly share tips on using AI tools.

“When I was in college, even Python — which people often called the easiest programming language — felt difficult, so I never thought about going into development,” Yoo said. “Now I can use AI to build a service prototype on my own without asking the development team for help. My mindset has completely changed from the past, when I thought, ‘This isn’t my job.’”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM MIN-JEONG [[email protected]]