AI cuts engineer hiring, shifts to sales

When firms deploy internal agentic AI that raises developer productivity, they may stop growing engineering headcount and instead hire more customer‑facing staff to sell and explain the automated product; support headcount can fall sharply as AI handles routine tasks. This creates rapid, firm‑level reallocation from production roles to market and onboarding roles and forces changes in corporate training and regional labor demand. — If replicated across large technology firms, this trend will reshape labor markets, higher‑education curricula, and political debates about automation, job retraining, and who captures AI gains.