DEV Community: Melvin Steppe

The $135 Billion AI Gap: Why Companies Keep Buying AI but Forget to Prepare Their People

Melvin Steppe — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:50:32 +0000

Something about the AI conversation feels… off

If you’ve sat in even a few strategy meetings this year, you’ve probably noticed a pattern.

There’s a lot of urgency around AI.
Budgets get approved quickly.
Tools are adopted even faster.

But when the conversation shifts to people—training, readiness, mindset—it suddenly slows down.

Not intentionally. Just… quietly pushed aside.

And that’s where things start to feel unbalanced.

Because while companies are clearly serious about AI, they’re not equally serious about preparing their teams for it.

The gap no one planned for

Here’s the strange part.

Most leaders already know that AI success depends on people. That’s not a controversial take anymore.

And yet, when you look at actual investment, the follow-through just isn’t there.

So what you end up with is this odd situation:
organizations are building powerful AI environments… with teams that are still figuring out the basics.

Not because they’re incapable.
Because no one really made it a priority.

That’s the gap. And it’s bigger than it looks from the outside.

Where enterprise AI strategy 2026 starts to slip

On paper, most enterprise AI strategies look solid.

There’s a roadmap.
There are tools.
There’s some form of transformation plan.

But if you look closely, a lot of those strategies lean heavily toward technology—and very lightly toward people.

Questions that should be central often get treated as secondary:

Who is actually confident using these tools?
What changes in someone’s day-to-day work?
Are managers equipped to guide teams through this shift?

Without clear answers, even good strategies start to lose momentum after implementation.

The AI upskilling gap, in plain terms

At its core, the AI upskilling gap is pretty straightforward.

Companies are moving faster than their people can realistically keep up.

That’s it.

And the longer that continues, the harder it becomes to close the gap later.

Because catching up under pressure is very different from learning with intent.

What employees are actually saying (when they’re honest)

One thing I’ve learned over the years—people don’t always say what they feel in internal meetings.

But they will say it elsewhere.

Looking at recent feedback trends on EyesBreaker, there’s been a noticeable increase in employees pointing out the same issue: they’re expected to work with AI, but not really shown how.

Not in a structured way, at least.

What’s changed isn’t just the number of mentions—it’s the tone.

Earlier this year, the conversation sounded like curiosity.
Now, it sounds closer to frustration.

That shift matters.

Because curiosity drives adoption.
Frustration slows it down.

Subtle signs your company might be rushing AI

Not every issue shows up as a major failure. Sometimes it’s more subtle than that.

You might notice things like:

Tools being introduced with minimal context
Training existing, but not really prioritized
People relying on a few “go-to” individuals for anything AI-related
A general sense of “we’ll figure it out as we go”

None of these feel critical in isolation.

But together, they create hesitation—and hesitation is where AI initiatives start losing impact.

The costs that don’t show up in reports

Most organizations are tracking the obvious metrics.

Efficiency. Speed. Cost savings.

What’s harder to measure—and often ignored—is how people feel working in this new setup.

Uncertainty doesn’t appear in dashboards.
Neither does lack of confidence.

But both affect how decisions are made.

And over time, that influences outcomes far more than most teams expect.

The shift that’s already happening

There’s a quiet change happening in how some companies approach this.

They’re moving away from thinking in terms of roles and starting to think in terms of adaptability.

Instead of asking, “What happens to this job?”
They’re asking, “How do we help this person stay relevant?”

It sounds like a small shift. It isn’t.

Because it changes where the investment goes.

What a different approach actually looks like

The companies that seem to be handling this better aren’t necessarily doing anything dramatic.

They’re just more consistent about a few things:

They make learning part of normal work—not an extra task.
They allow room for experimentation without over-policing mistakes.
They explain why AI is being introduced, not just what is being introduced.

And importantly, they don’t assume people will just adapt on their own.

So where does the real advantage come from now?

It’s tempting to think the edge still comes from better tools.

But that’s becoming less true.

Because most companies now have access to similar technologies.

What’s different is how effectively those tools are used—and that comes down to people.

Always has, honestly.

A more grounded way to look at it

The $135 billion gap isn’t really about money.

It’s about how uneven the focus has been.

Companies leaned heavily into building capability through technology.
They just didn’t match that effort when it came to building capability in people.

And now, that imbalance is starting to show.

Not all at once. But enough to notice.

Final thought

AI isn’t the problem here. And it’s not the solution either.

It’s just a tool—an incredibly powerful one, yes—but still a tool.

What determines whether it works or not is the same thing it’s always been:

How well people understand it, trust it, and actually use it in their day-to-day work.

Right now, that part is being underestimated.

And that’s where the real gap is.

The 20% Crisis: Why Global Employee Engagement Just Hit a 5-Year Low

Melvin Steppe — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:42:41 +0000

I want to tell you a number, and I want you to actually sit with it for a second before you scroll past.

20.

That's the percentage of employees around the world who are genuinely, truly engaged at work right now. One in five. The rest? Either sleepwalking through their days or, worse, actively making things harder for the people around them.

The 2026 Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report dropped this week, and honestly — I've been staring at these findings since Tuesday morning. I've covered workplace culture for over a decade. I've read a lot of these reports. This one landed differently.

Engagement didn't just dip. It fell for the second year in a row. We're now sitting at a five-year low, and the word a lot of economists are starting to use — quietly, in conference rooms and Substacks — is "recession." Not a financial one. A human one.

Ten trillion dollars. Let's be real about what that means.

Gallup puts the annual cost of global disengagement at roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity. That's not a made-up consultancy number designed to scare CFOs into buying a wellness app subscription. It's a serious economic estimate — and if you want a reference point, that figure is somewhere in the neighborhood of Japan and Germany's GDPs combined, gone every single year.

For those of us who work in tech: you already know this intuitively, even if you haven't seen the data. You've been in those standups. The ones where half the camera icons are black squares and the other half are people clearly on their second browser tab. You've watched a genuinely talented colleague go from sharp and engaged to... fine. Just fine. Contributing exactly what's required and not one bit more. That slow fade has a cost attached to it now. A very large one.

This stopped being a "culture fit" problem a while back. At $10 trillion, it's a structural economic problem dressed in a hoodie and pretending to be on a call.

Why is this happening? Three things, in my honest read of the data.

Managers are exhausted — and nobody's talking about it enough

The number that genuinely unsettled me in the Gallup data: manager engagement has dropped 9 percentage points since 2022.

Nine points. In four years. Among the people whose entire job description is supposed to involve energizing and developing other humans.

Here's the thing about middle managers that I think gets missed in most of the "leadership transformation" discourse: they got absolutely pummeled over the last few years and were given no real support for it. They enforced return-to-office mandates they didn't write and didn't believe in. They counseled grieving employees during waves of layoffs they weren't consulted on. They absorbed anxiety from both directions — from their teams, from their leadership — and were expected to remain steady and motivating throughout all of it.

And now AI is quietly eating chunks of what used to justify their role. The coordination work, the information-relay work, the scheduling and tracking work. All of it getting automated. So not only are they burned out — they're also watching the goalposts of their career move while they're standing on the field.

When your manager is running on empty, it flows downward. Every time.

"We're profitable AND laying people off" — that broke something

71,000+ tech job cuts in the first four months of 2026. I know that number. You probably know that number. But what's different about this round is the profile of the companies doing the cutting.

Oracle. Delivery Hero. SAP. These aren't struggling organizations desperately trimming to survive. These are restructuring decisions made at the intersection of strategy and AI capability — profitable companies deciding which human roles still make sense in a world where the software is getting remarkably good at certain things.

The result, for the people inside those companies watching it happen? A complete unraveling of the implicit contract that used to exist: do good work, keep your job. That contract was already fraying. These "surgical layoffs" — precise, quiet, ideologically disconnected from financial distress — finished the job. When you can't understand why someone got cut, you can't protect yourself from being next. That uncertainty sits in the body. It shows up as disengagement.

The "flexibility era" mostly just moved the office into our homes

Remote work was framed as liberation. For a lot of people it delivered something closer to... the office following them into the bedroom. Slack notifications at 9 PM aren't an aberration anymore, they're a norm. Global teams mean someone is always starting their day while someone else is ending theirs, and the meeting culture that emerged from that is genuinely punishing.

People are showing up. They're technically present. They're just — depleted. And depleted people don't do their best work, they do enough work. The Gallup wellbeing scores and engagement scores move together for a reason.

Here's the part that actually matters: the 20% exists.

Everything above is real and worth taking seriously. But here's where I want to shift the frame.

If 20% of employees globally are genuinely engaged, that means roughly 20% of companies have built something the other 80% haven't figured out yet. That's not evenly distributed noise — it clusters. High-engagement workplaces tend to share specific structural and cultural characteristics: managers who are actually supported and developed themselves, psychological safety that gets maintained under pressure (not just proclaimed on a careers page), clear purpose that connects individual work to something real.

These companies aren't all household names. Some of the best ones you've never heard of. A 400-person B2B software company in Warsaw. A design studio in Singapore. A fintech in Lagos that nobody's written a glossy profile of yet. They exist across every industry and geography, and some of them are hiring right now.

The problem isn't that they don't exist. The problem is that our tools for finding them are broken.

Job postings are marketing documents. Careers pages are aspirational fiction. Annual "Best Places to Work" awards are based on surveys that may be 12-18 months stale by the time you read the list. And recruiters — lovely as many of them are — are advocates for the role, not balanced advisors to your career.

What you actually need is real, unfiltered signal from people already inside. Current and recent employees talking honestly about manager quality, workload sustainability, whether the psychological safety stuff is real or decorative. That signal exists — it's just scattered and hard to surface. That's the specific problem EyesBreaker was built to solve: pulling that signal together so you can find the 20% before you commit two years of your life to somewhere that'll drain you.

Five things the Gallup data is actually telling you to do

1. Evaluate the manager, not the company brand.
You won't be working for the CEO. You'll be working for one person, probably a mid-level manager, who is — statistically — more likely than ever to be burned out themselves. Ask to meet them before you accept. Watch how they talk about their team. Watch whether they seem like someone with energy to give.

2. Ask better interview questions.
"What's your culture like?" gets you a brochure answer. "Tell me about a time someone on the team raised a concern that changed how leadership handled something" — that gets you something real. Vagueness in response to specific questions is data.

3. Look for discretionary energy in current employees.
Engaged people do things they don't have to do — they share knowledge, they mentor, they post about their work publicly because they're proud of it. When you talk to people inside a target company (and please, talk to people inside), listen for that kind of energy. It's completely distinguishable from rehearsed enthusiasm.

4. Stop treating "no layoffs recently" as a signal of safety.
The surgical layoff era means that's no longer a reliable indicator. Look instead at how a company has handled restructuring — whether it was done with transparency and support, or in the dark with a calendar invite and an HR script.

5. Use real-time data, not annual snapshots.
Workplace sentiment changes fast. A company that was great in 2024 might have had three rounds of leadership changes since then. Platforms that aggregate live, ongoing employee sentiment give you a much more accurate picture than a badge from a survey done 14 months ago.

For the founders and leaders reading this

The Gallup numbers aren't a news story to react to. They're a measurement of what's already happening inside your walls.

The organizations that come out of this engagement recession well won't do it by adding a ping-pong table or a quarterly bonus. They'll do it by actually investing in the humans they ask to lead other humans — by taking manager wellbeing as seriously as infrastructure uptime, by measuring psychological safety and acting on what they find, by making it genuinely safe for people to raise problems before those problems become attrition.

Disengagement is a response to an environment. That means it's fixable. But only if you're willing to look honestly at the environment you've built.

So where does that leave us

Four out of five employees globally are going through the motions. Ten trillion dollars disappearing annually into the gap between "showing up" and "actually caring." A manager class that's been quietly hollowing out for four years. And a set of job-search tools that are almost perfectly designed to help you not find the good ones.

That's the honest picture in April 2026.

The other piece of the honest picture: the good companies are out there. The ones where people stay, grow, refer their friends, and actually look forward — not every day, but most days — to the work. They exist right now. Some are hiring.

The only question worth asking is whether you have a real way to find them.

EyesBreaker is a global workplace intelligence platform helping professionals identify high-engagement companies through real employee signal — not marketing. EyesBreaker.com

The Death of the 9 to 5 Why Portfolio Careers Are the Secret to 2026 Job Security

Melvin Steppe — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:08:16 +0000

Not long ago, the “safe” career path looked predictable.

One job. One company. One steady climb.

You joined, stayed loyal, and slowly moved up.

That model is quietly breaking.

In 2026, job security is no longer about staying in one place. It is about building multiple income streams, multiple skills, and multiple identities.

Welcome to the rise of the portfolio career.

And if you are not already thinking about it, you are already late to the shift.

What is a Portfolio Career Really

Let’s remove the buzzword for a second.

A portfolio career simply means you are not dependent on a single job for your income or growth.

Instead, you combine different roles like:

A full time or part time job
Freelance projects
Consulting work
Content creation or personal brand
Side businesses

It is not about doing more work.

It is about spreading risk and increasing control.

Think of it like investing.

You would not put all your money in one stock. So why put your entire career in one company?

Why the 9 to 5 Model is Losing Relevance

This shift is not random. It is happening because the system itself is changing.

*Job Security is No Longer Guaranteed
*
Layoffs are faster. Companies restructure quickly. Loyalty is no longer a safety net.

Even high performers are not immune.

*Skills Expire Faster Than Before
*
What you learn today may not be relevant in two years.

A single role often limits your exposure.

Multiple streams keep you adaptable.

*People Want More Control Over Time
*
Flexibility is no longer a luxury. It is becoming a baseline expectation.

People want to decide how, when, and where they work.

Portfolio careers make that possible.

The Hidden Advantage Most People Miss

Most people think portfolio careers are risky.

In reality, depending on one income source is the bigger risk.

When you have multiple streams:

Losing one does not collapse everything
You gain negotiation power
You explore different industries faster
You build a stronger personal brand

And over time, you stop relying on companies to define your growth.

But Here is the Catch Not All Companies Support This

This is where things get tricky.

Many companies say they support flexibility.

But in reality:

They restrict side hustles
They expect full availability beyond work hours
They monitor productivity aggressively
They discourage external work

So before you jump into a portfolio career, you need to answer one question.

Does your employer actually allow it?

Companies That Allow Side Hustles What to Look For

If you are serious about this path, you need to evaluate companies differently.

Not just salary. Not just brand name.

Look for signals like:

*Clear Policies on Side Work
*
Does the company openly allow freelance or external projects?

Or is everything hidden in vague clauses?

*Outcome Based Performance
*
Do they care about results or just hours online?

Flexible companies focus on output, not constant activity.

*Healthy Work Culture
*
Are employees encouraged to grow outside their role?

Or are they expected to stay in a fixed lane?

*Real Employee Experiences
*
This is the most important one.

What employees say matters more than what companies claim.

Because policies look good on paper.

Reality shows up in reviews.

How to Actually Find Flexible Employers

This is where most people struggle.

Job descriptions rarely tell the truth about flexibility.

You have to dig deeper.

*Use Real Employee Insights
*
Instead of guessing, check what employees are saying about:

Side hustle policies
Work life balance
Management behavior
Micromanagement or freedom

Patterns matter more than individual opinions.

*Compare Before You Decide
*
Do not just look at one company.

Compare multiple companies based on:

Flexibility
Work culture
Growth opportunities

This gives you a clearer picture.

*Look for Red Flags Early
*
If multiple employees mention:

Burnout
No time for personal projects
Strict monitoring

That is your signal to rethink.

Fractional Employment is Becoming Normal

Another shift that is closely tied to portfolio careers is fractional work.

This means working with multiple companies in smaller capacities instead of one full time role.

For example:

Fractional product manager
Part time marketing strategist
Contract based developer

Companies are also adapting because:

It reduces cost
Gives access to specialized talent
Increases flexibility

And for professionals, it opens more doors.

The Smart Way to Build a Portfolio Career

If you are starting, do not quit your job immediately.

Start small.

Take one freelance project
Build one skill outside your role
Test one additional income stream

Then slowly expand.

At the same time, make sure your current company does not block your growth.

Because the wrong environment can quietly limit everything.

Final Thought

The idea of one job for life is fading.

Not dramatically. Not overnight.

But steadily.

Portfolio careers are not just a trend. They are becoming a practical way to stay secure, flexible, and in control.

And the smartest professionals in 2026 are not asking:

“Which company should I depend on?”

They are asking:

“How do I make sure I never have to depend on just one?”

The 2026 AI Promotion Gap Are Algorithms Deciding Your Next Raise

Melvin Steppe — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:03:41 +0000

A few years ago, performance reviews were simple.

You sat across from your manager, discussed your work, maybe negotiated a raise, and walked out with clarity, even if you didn’t always agree.

In 2026, that clarity is starting to disappear.

Not because managers stopped caring, but because something else stepped in between you and your growth.

And not just basic automation. We are talking about Agentic AI systems that actively observe, evaluate, and influence decisions about your performance.

The real question is not whether AI is involved anymore.

It is how much control it already has over your career.

So What Exactly Is the AI Promotion Gap

Let’s keep this simple.

The AI promotion gap is the difference between how you think you are performing and how an algorithm evaluates you.

And those two things are not always aligned.

You might be doing meaningful, high impact work, but if the system values speed over depth or visibility over substance, you can still be scored lower than someone doing less important work but in a more “trackable” way.

That gap is where frustration begins.

And most people don’t even realize it exists.

What Changed in Performance Reviews

This didn’t happen overnight. It crept in slowly.

At first, AI tools were used to assist managers. Now, in many companies, they are shaping the final decision.

Here is what that looks like in real life:

You Are Always Being Measured

It is no longer about one annual review. Your activity across tools, emails, chats, and dashboards is constantly being tracked.

Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it creates pressure to always “look active.”

Your Work Is Reduced to Patterns

Instead of just outcomes, systems look at behavior.

How fast you reply
How often you collaborate
How visible you are in meetings

But here is the catch. Not all valuable work is visible.

Promotions Are Becoming Predictive

Some systems try to forecast who is “promotion ready.”

Sounds smart. But if the data is based on past patterns, it often rewards people who already fit a certain mold.

That means others get overlooked before they even get a chance.

The Part No One Talks About Clearly

We like to think AI is neutral, but it is not.

It learns from historical data. And history, as we know, is not always fair.

So what happens?

Certain roles get undervalued
Quiet contributors get ignored
Remote workers can be seen as less engaged
People who don’t fit traditional patterns fall behind

And the most frustrating part is this.

You rarely know why it is happening.

Are AI Based Performance Reviews Actually Fair

Honestly, it depends on the company.

Some are trying to use AI responsibly.

Others are using it blindly.

The difference usually comes down to three things:

Do they explain how the system works
Do humans still make the final call
Do employees have a way to question the outcome

If the answer is no to any of these, that is a red flag.

How You Can Protect Yourself in This Shift

You cannot avoid AI in the workplace anymore.

But you can become smarter about how you deal with it.

Start Paying Attention to How You Are Evaluated

Ask questions. Not aggressively, just clearly.

What metrics matter
How performance is tracked
What actually influences promotions

Don’t Just Work Hard Work Visible

It may sound unfair, but visibility matters more now.

Document your work
Share progress updates
Make your impact easy to understand

Look Beyond the Job Offer

Before joining a company, try to understand their culture around performance.

Do employees feel fairly evaluated
Do people talk about transparency
Are there complaints about micromanagement or tracking

This is where platforms like EyesBreaker can actually help.

Instead of guessing, you can read what real employees are experiencing.

Not polished company statements. Real feedback.

Why EyesBreaker Becomes Useful Here

When everything starts looking good on paper, you need something real.

EyesBreaker helps you see patterns that companies don’t highlight:

Are employees complaining about unfair ratings
Is there too much monitoring
Do people feel promotions are justified

When multiple people say the same thing, it is usually not random.

It is a signal.

And those signals can save you from walking into the wrong environment.

Quick Answers People Are Searching For

1. What is Agentic AI in simple terms

It is AI that does not just assist but actually takes action and influences decisions.

2. Can AI really affect my promotion

Yes. In many companies, it already plays a role in deciding who gets promoted or rewarded.

3. How do I know if my company is using AI fairly

Look for transparency. If you don’t understand how you are being evaluated, that is a problem.

4. Are employee reviews online trustworthy

Not all of them. But when many people point out the same issue, it is worth paying attention.

The Bigger Picture

AI is not going away.

And honestly, it should not. It can make things faster, more structured, even more objective in some cases.

But without checks, it can also make workplaces feel colder and less fair.

The goal is not to fight AI.

It is to understand it well enough that it does not quietly work against you.AI driven promotions

Final Thought

Your career should not feel like a system you cannot see.

If something feels off, it probably is.

Stay aware. Ask questions. Use available insights.

Because in a world where algorithms are part of the decision, awareness becomes your biggest advantage.

DEV Community: Melvin Steppe

The $135 Billion AI Gap: Why Companies Keep Buying AI but Forget to Prepare Their People

Something about the AI conversation feels… off

The gap no one planned for

Where enterprise AI strategy 2026 starts to slip

The AI upskilling gap, in plain terms

What employees are actually saying (when they’re honest)

Subtle signs your company might be rushing AI

The costs that don’t show up in reports

The shift that’s already happening

What a different approach actually looks like

So where does the real advantage come from now?

A more grounded way to look at it

Final thought

The 20% Crisis: Why Global Employee Engagement Just Hit a 5-Year Low

Ten trillion dollars. Let's be real about what that means.

Why is this happening? Three things, in my honest read of the data.

Managers are exhausted — and nobody's talking about it enough

"We're profitable AND laying people off" — that broke something

The "flexibility era" mostly just moved the office into our homes

Here's the part that actually matters: the 20% exists.

Five things the Gallup data is actually telling you to do

For the founders and leaders reading this

So where does that leave us

The Death of the 9 to 5 Why Portfolio Careers Are the Secret to 2026 Job Security

What is a Portfolio Career Really

Why the 9 to 5 Model is Losing Relevance

The Hidden Advantage Most People Miss

But Here is the Catch Not All Companies Support This

Companies That Allow Side Hustles What to Look For

How to Actually Find Flexible Employers

Fractional Employment is Becoming Normal

People Also Ask

The Smart Way to Build a Portfolio Career

Final Thought

The 2026 AI Promotion Gap Are Algorithms Deciding Your Next Raise

So What Exactly Is the AI Promotion Gap

What Changed in Performance Reviews

You Are Always Being Measured

Your Work Is Reduced to Patterns

Promotions Are Becoming Predictive

The Part No One Talks About Clearly

Are AI Based Performance Reviews Actually Fair

How You Can Protect Yourself in This Shift

Start Paying Attention to How You Are Evaluated

Don’t Just Work Hard Work Visible

Look Beyond the Job Offer

Why EyesBreaker Becomes Useful Here

Quick Answers People Are Searching For

The Bigger Picture

Final Thought