Kikake Creation, a company providing IT career support, announced the results of its "IT Engineer Development Mental Load Survey" on August 31, 2026, based on a survey of 321 engineers engaged in system development.
Engineer Stress on the Rise Due to AI Proliferation, Driven by Expectations and Pressure from Non-Engineers
This article is a translation. Read the Japanese original
According to the survey, since 2025, when the business use of AI such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot became widespread, 36.1% of respondents felt that their stress had increased (combining "strongly agree" and "somewhat agree"). Among the causes of newly felt stress in the multi-choice responses, the most frequent was receiving expectations or pressure from non-engineering roles, such as "you should be able to do it faster if you have AI," which recorded 53.4%.
In fact, a total of 45.8% of respondents reported having experienced comments of this nature from non-engineering roles. Additionally, when asked whether they felt the stress and hardships of their specific job type are sufficiently understood by other roles such as project managers, sales staff, and non-engineers, the combined responses for "I do not think so" and "I do not think so at all" reached 45.8%.
Regarding future careers, 28.7% of respondents want to continue in their current environment, 37.7% want to "continue in a different environment," and a combined 19.0% responded with "I would like to leave if possible" or "I want to leave immediately." As for what is needed in the future to reduce stress, "a system that allows for appropriate man-hours and schedule setting" was the most common response at 41.7%, followed by "improvement in salary/compensation (30.2%)" and "mechanisms to streamline alignment among stakeholders (29.3%)."
Sources
- 「AIを使えば早くできるでしょ」と言われがち――エンジニアを困らせる"勘違い"の正体とは？ （ITmedia AI+、2026-10-01）
- プレスリリース