Web Summit’s main stage in Lisbon in November 2025 Credit: Web Summit / CC BY 4.0 via Flickr (cropped) Almost six in 10 people working in tech say AI has added to their workload rather than cutting it. That is the headline finding of Web Summit’s first State of the Industry report, published on Thursday. Some 59% said their workload had increased, 20% said it had fallen and 20% saw little change. Web Summit surveyed 1,455 founders, investors, engineers and creators from its own community in July and August.
The sample leans towards founders and people who build products, the report says. Just over a third of respondents were women, and more than half were aged between 35 and 54. Busier, not replaced The AI workload rise was strongest in industries closest to AI. Some 70% of respondents in AI and machine-learning infrastructure said their workload was up.
So did 68% in SaaS and business software and 67% in hardware and the internet of things. By role, engineering and product staff reported the biggest increase, at 64%, followed by founders at 63%. Investors were the least likely to say so, at 42%. “AI speeds up production, raising expectations about how much we can deliver. But people can be too confident in its output, and there’s often too little time to review it,” one engineer in Europe wrote.
On jobs, respondents were split. Some 39% expect headcount in their field to grow over the next two years, 33% expect it to fall and 28% expect little change. The outlook for entry-level roles was darker. Some 42% expect their company to have fewer of them, rising to 50% among C-suite respondents and 58% among investors.
Students were the exception: 55% expect more entry-level jobs. In September, the Financial Times reported that UBS now wants AI skills from its junior bankers. Younger respondents worried more about their own jobs. Some 45% of 18 to 24-year-olds said they were concerned, against 32% of those aged 55 and over. “No entry level developers are being hired across the industry.
What happens when all the seniors retire or leave? Who’s going to fix AI slop?” an engineer in North America wrote. No ‘brain rot’, says the industry Some 55% said AI strengthens their critical thinking, 26% said it weakens it and 19% saw no difference. Those aged 65 and over were the most positive, at 71%, against 48% of 18 to 24-year-olds.
Engineers were the most sceptical: 37% said AI was weakening their thinking. On money, about a third think AI investment is still in its early stages and will keep growing. Another 32% think it is too high and will slow gradually, and 10% expect it to fall sharply. More than half of engineering and product respondents said investment is already too high.
Last week, Gartner warned that $3.5 trillion of AI spending was at risk of future write-downs. Some 42% expect smaller teams with higher output, rising to half of founders, while 9% expect teams to grow. Respondents use 2.3 AI providers on average, and 43% use three or more. Women and men disagreed on which skills will matter most.
Some 41% of women picked emotional and people skills, against 27% of men. Men were more likely to choose technical and engineering skills, at 37% against 24% of women. Nidhi Naithani, Web Summit’s senior vice president of technology operations, said the engineering and developer community was the group most worried about job security. “It seems counterintuitive, but as engineers and founders are generally the builders and earliest adopters of these technologies, they generally have the best understanding and a front-row seat to its impact,” Naithani said. Web Summit published the findings ahead of its Lisbon event on 9 to 12 November.
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