At What Cost? Software Developers' Well-Being in the Age of GenAI
For software developers and researchers, this paper highlights the overlooked negative consequences of GenAI on well-being, but it is a position paper without empirical results.
This position paper argues that the focus on productivity gains from GenAI in software development overlooks negative impacts on developer well-being, such as increased cognitive load, stress, and burnout, and calls for a research agenda centered on human experience and sustainable productivity.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly reshaping software development, with growing emphasis on accelerating productivity and optimizing performance. However, excessive focus on such dimensions risks overlooking the critical implications for developer well-being. GenAI tools can amplify cognitive load, introduce new forms of oversight labor, and escalate expectations around output and pace, contributing to stress, burnout, and diminished work-life balance. The GenAI movement is also transforming professional norms, altering career entry points, demanding continuous adaptation, and deepening inequalities in access and support. This position paper calls for a reorientation of the GenAI research agenda in software development and proposes a theoretical framework to move beyond narrow performance metrics toward investigations that also center on human experience, social context, and sustainable productivity.