Czech software firms are cutting or not replacing junior developers because of AI, survey and hiring data show

Some Czech software companies have already laid off staff whose work AI took over, and many more are quietly not replacing developers who leave, Lupa.cz reported on 2 November 2026 from new survey and hiring data. In a poll of eleven member firms by the Association of Software Agencies (ASWA), run with Lupa, some had let go people whose work AI had taken on, 13 full-time jobs in total, mostly juniors and less experienced developers; others were deliberately leaving positions unfilled. Separately, the Alister project run by the investment fund Miton, which tracks about 220,000 people in the Czech tech sector, found that nine in ten larger Czech tech firms did not grow their developer teams in 2025, and almost a third shrank, refilling fewer than 70% of the people who left. "There is no big wave of layoffs, but no growth either. Headcount has frozen," said Markéta Pařízek, the Miton HR partner who built Alister. Only 14 of 320 firms showed a burst of departures in a single month; the rest shrank by attrition. Developers who left a job in 2025 found a new employer within three months 8% less often than before the pandemic, the slowest since 2018. Martin Kučera, managing partner of the agency integritty, said AI had "taken over the work of more junior programmers and a large part of marketing". The figures are small samples and come from industry groups, but they show the mechanism: the work juniors used to learn on is the work AI now does.