In a survey from SThree, 15% of UK STEM professionals said they had seen colleagues leave because AI changed their role too much.
SThree is a UK staffing firm that places scientists, engineers and tech specialists in jobs. Retention and hard-to-fill roles are its business, which is worth remembering when it publishes a survey about both.
The survey names several reasons people left. Reduced career progression (14%) and unsustainable workloads (12%) were among the most common. Separately, 45% of respondents said their organization had struggled to replace specialist employees who left over the past year. The source does not say those departures were all AI-related, so the two numbers should not be fused into one story.
The survey also cuts against the usual picture of AI hitting entry-level staff first. SThree found that 29% of senior employees are taking on responsibilities previously held by more junior people. And 37% of workers agreed that employers are deploying AI too quickly. "When workers vote with their feet, businesses can be left with lasting skills gaps that can be costly," said Rakesh Patel, SThree's UK managing director.
There is a caveat. The material available does not give the sample size or say how respondents were recruited, and this is one firm's survey of UK workers. Read it as a signal, not a measured trend. It also means 85% did not report this kind of exit.
The seniors-doing-junior-work figure raises the more interesting question. SThree says STEM skills take multiple years to develop. If juniors handle less of the groundwork, and seniors absorb it on top of heavier workloads, where does the next generation of specialists get its training?