---
title: "AI Impact Curves"
description: "Explore how AI impacts productivity across seniority levels, from junior to senior roles. Key insights on automation effects \u0026 business value in tech organizations."
categories: ["AI"]
keywords: ["AI Impact Curves","AI productivity","automation in tech","seniority levels in AI","business value of AI","junior engineers AI","senior engineers AI","AI adaptation ability","Theory Ventures","Tomasz Tunguz"]
ai_summary: "Explore how AI impacts productivity differently across various seniority levels in tech organizations."
date: 2025-02-09
lastmod: 2026-07-21
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/ai-impact-curves/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---

What is the impact of AI across different levels of seniority? 

Over the weekend, I read Sergey Tselovalnikov's post on [AI Impact Curves](https://serce.me/posts/2025-02-07-the-llm-curve-of-impact-on-software-engineers).

![image](https://res.cloudinary.com/dzawgnnlr/image/upload/burne40g5zxnxukrmbcg.png)

The software engineering curve reveals an intriguing pattern. 

Junior engineers experience both benefits and risks from AI. Staff+ engineers also gain tremendous leverage at the senior end of the curve. 

However, mid-level engineers see more modest impacts, primarily because they are proficient with their codebases and can write effective code adeptly. 

I wondered about other disciplines : law, accounting, customer support financial analysis, consulting. 

I found myself drawing a chart with two y-axes instead : impact on the individual and impact on the business. Because they could be quite different. 



![image](https://res.cloudinary.com/dzawgnnlr/image/upload/ziawowg8halxbwqzqlgb.png)



At the junior level, there's a meaningful difference between the impact on an individual and an impact on a company. A junior person is much more likely to find their job or at least portions of it automated by more experienced colleagues employees moving up the organization - presuming they embrace AI. 

The owners of a business or the leaders of a business would find themselves benefiting from the efficiencies of AI driving greater profitability with potentially somewhat negative expense of managing smaller teams.

Business leaders benefit from increased productivity & potentially reduced team sizes.

But even this dual curve model is too simplistic. The real differentiator could be adaptation ability rather than seniority. 

A junior employee who masterfully leverages AI creates outsized value for both themselves and the organization - a truth that holds across all roles and levels.