Role and Identity Work of Software Engineering Professionals in the Generative AI Era
Jorge Melegati

TL;DR
This paper explores how the adoption of Generative AI impacts the work identity of software engineering professionals, emphasizing the importance of role differences like developers and testers in this process.
Contribution
It highlights the need to consider professional roles in studying identity work related to GenAI adoption and proposes a research agenda for this investigation.
Findings
Role influences identity work in GenAI adoption
Different roles face unique identity challenges
Implications for developing supportive artifacts
Abstract
The adoption of Generative AI (GenAI) suggests major changes for software engineering, including technical aspects but also human aspects of the professionals involved. One of these aspects is how individuals perceive themselves regarding their work, i.e., their work identity, and the processes they perform to form, adapt and reject these identities, i.e., identity work. Existent studies provide evidence of such identity work of software professionals triggered by the adoption of GenAI, however they do not consider differences among diverse roles, such as developers and testers. In this paper, we argue the need for considering the role as a factor defining the identity work of software professionals. To support our claim, we review some studies regarding different roles and also recent studies on how to adopt GenAI in software engineering. Then, we propose a research agenda to better…
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Taxonomy
TopicsEthics and Social Impacts of AI · AI in Service Interactions · Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
