IT Culture / AISeries: Office Bakwas

The AI is in the office now. It is in the IDE. It is in the code review. It is in the test cases. It writes better documentation than you. It is faster than you. It doesn't need a standup update. It doesn't take lunch. It does not have an existential crisis on the bench. It will not replace you, says the company. It will replace the work you do, says the same company, in a different document.

By Bench Babu  |  May 23, 2026  |  Office Culture Series, Part 6

INDIA, EVERY OFFICE — GitHub Copilot is in the IDE. Amazon CodeWhisperer is in the IDE. Cursor AI is the IDE. The junior developer who joined six months ago is using one of these to generate boilerplate code in the time it used to take to open the documentation. He is not cheating. He is doing what the tool was built for. His output has doubled. His code reviews are faster. His bugs are different — not fewer, but different: the bugs of a person using AI incorrectly are more interesting than the bugs of a person writing code slowly by hand. His manager has noticed the output increase. His manager has not asked how. His manager has told the client the team's velocity has improved. The client is pleased. The manager's quarterly review will be good. The AI has not been mentioned to the client. The AI is not on the invoice.

"AI will not replace developers. Developers who use AI will replace developers who don't."— Every tech LinkedIn post since 2023, attributed to someone different each time, never sourced, always exactly true, always shared by someone who is currently slightly terrified and performing confidence.

The reality in Indian IT in 2026 is more specific. Entry-level roles — the manual testing, the L1 support, the basic CRUD application development, the document writing — are being absorbed by AI agents at a rate that fresher hiring numbers confirm. TCS hired 600,000 freshers at peak in FY22. It is hiring 40,000 this year. The difference is not the economy. The difference is the code is being written differently now and requires fewer people in the first loop. The roles that remain require judgment, architecture, and the ability to tell an AI what to build — which is a skill that requires deep understanding of what should be built, which is a skill that junior developers develop by first building things themselves, which they are no longer being hired to do at the same rate. This loop has not been closed. The industry is hoping it closes before the next generation of graduates arrives. The next generation of graduates arrived in May. They are refreshing cbse.gov.in.

Meanwhile, in the meeting room on the third floor, Rajiv Sir is presenting a slide titled "Our AI Strategy" that he did not write. He asked Claude to write it. The slide says "leverage AI capabilities to drive synergistic value creation across the digital transformation journey." Rajiv Sir does not fully know what this means. The AI that wrote it does not fully know what this means. The audience nodding at it does not fully know what this means. The slide is approved. The strategy is documented. The transformation is underway. The transformation is this slide, in a meeting room, being presented by a man whose Java code from 2009 is still in production and is the most functional thing anyone in this room has ever shipped.

AI In Office IndiaGitHub CopilotJunior Dev Replaced40000 Freshers vs 600000Rajiv Sir AI StrategySynergistic Value Creation
Disclaimer: Satire. Fresher hiring data from Xpheno and Nasscom. The 600K to 40K drop is documented. Rajiv Sir's AI strategy slide is fictional. The phrase "synergistic value creation" is unfortunately real and in active corporate use. — Ed.