Do tech workers need to study AI after hours too?

For Rohan Kulkarni, a software engineer at Meta, the workday ending doesn't mean he's done thinking about AI. He spends four to six hours a week outside the office keeping up with the technology, paying roughly $50 a month across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity subscriptions, according to Business Insider.

Kulkarni is one of many tech professionals who spend their own time on AI, whether to develop side projects, acquire skills, or merely not fall behind other people.

Why are tech workers studying on their own time?

He noted at work that the use of AI has reduced the time needed for certain projects from around one month to just two or three weeks. Even outside of work, that same curiosity remains, and this is because of the habit he developed of teaching himself new technologies via side projects before generative AI was even invented.

As Kulkarni mentioned, he started by allowing the AI to solve everything for him and did not bother trying to solve problems on his own. These days, he has started coming up with his solutions first and then validating them with the help of AI.

These additional hours have not come at the expense of anything important to him, according to Kulkarni, referring to less time wasted on YouTube Shorts and watching passively.

He admitted that approaching oneself as an architect instead of a hands-on worker is something that involves another level of thinking altogether, which he recognises can be one of the reasons for his peers' AI fatigue.

Kulkarni is someone who always builds up from what he already knows instead of following every new technology available and focuses on addressing issues faced by actual people rather than the technology.

This applies even to networking, where he believes that the better professional relations occur because of curiosity instead of opportunism.