Tech workers are 'job hugging', ISACA warns, as AI reshapes their roles

High job satisfaction may not be enough for employers to keep hold of their tech staff, according to new research from professional association ISACA, which warns that burnout and unclear career paths are pushing workers to look elsewhere.

According to the organisation's Tech Workplace and Culture 2026 report, which surveyed more than 1,000 tech professionals worldwide, although 76% are satisfied with their current role and 71% are satisfied with their career progression, nearly three-quarters (73%) said they would consider moving to a new employer in the next two years, or had not ruled it out.

Among respondents who had left a previous job, the most common reasons were better career prospects (29%), higher pay (28%), and more interesting work (23%). An unclear path upwards was also the most commonly cited obstacle to career advancement, named by a third (34%) of respondents and 41% of women.

Economic conditions may be masking the scale of this problem, according to Julia Hermann, head of digital platform services at cybersecurity firm Giesecke+Devrient. Speaking at a media briefing during ISACA Europe 2026, Hermann, who is also a leader of ISACA's SheLeadsTech programme in Germany, said layoffs in sectors such as the German automotive industry had led to a phenomenon known as "job hugging".

"People stick to their jobs, though they might not be totally satisfied, because at the moment it's not really easy to find a new job," she said. "The salaries are partially going down, or at least stagnating, so you're not necessarily making a big jump when you go to another company."

Long probationary periods add to the risk of moving, she added: "If you're the last to come, you're the first to go on the next layoffs."

This trend may be delaying departures rather than preventing them, however. ISACA warned that workplace pressures are feeding into the sector's retention problems, which three-quarters (75%) of respondents said were already a concern for their organisation. More than half (59%) of respondents said they had experienced work-related stress or burnout, rising to 64% among women, with the main causes being heavy workloads (48%) and a lack of resources (43%). Despite this, only a quarter (25%) said their employer offers mental health days, and 23% said it offers no support at all.

AI is adding to this pressure, Hermann explained, noting that while the technology is often deployed with the intention to reduce workloads, companies are not hiring for new roles to run the platforms behind it. As a result, she said, the work lands on existing staff on top of their day-to-day operational duties, noting that AI has created "a lot more work" for her team, which is now responsible for managing and securing the internal platforms that support the company's own AI models.

Entry-level roles may be more affected, however. Younger staff tend to move jobs more often, according to Hermann, and AI may also be squeezing the roles they start out in. ISACA's senior vice president of advocacy, Tara Wisniewski, warned this could make the industry's pipeline problems worse, arguing that organisations like ISACA and universities need to help graduates into the market, "and industry needs to be called to the table there too".

"We do believe that professions will change. We don't believe that they will be eradicated as a whole, but we do believe that they will change," Chris Dimitriadis, ISACA's chief global strategy officer, told media at ISACA Europe. He said he expects AI to take on most technical and orchestration tasks, leaving people to focus on governance, configuring and monitoring AI systems, and making final decisions.

In ISACA's State of Cybersecurity 2026 report, which surveyed security professionals globally, soft skills were the most commonly reported shortcoming among security professionals (57%), while 45% cited missing LLM SecOps capabilities, up 12 percentage points from the previous year. As AI takes on more technical work, Dimitriadis said, security staff will increasingly need the ability to explain to the rest of the business, in financial terms, how investment in security and AI will pay off.

Many teams are already short of people and money, however. The same report, published last month, found that more than half of European cyber security professionals said their teams were understaffed (56%) and underfunded (55%).

"Too often we are seeing budgets being sunk into crisis response, but there's still a distinct lack of investment in the workforce, training, and resources needed to prevent attacks and protect organisations in the first place," Dimitriadis said when the report was published.

He warned that the skills gap is likely to widen as roles change, "not just in terms of the numbers, but also in terms of the type of skills that's needed". It could grow "not because we are going to lose the people, but because... their knowledge may become obsolete very fast as digital ecosystems change".

ISACA's Tech Workplace and Culture 2026 survey of 1,025 tech professionals worldwide was carried out between 17 July and 3 August 2026. Its State of Cybersecurity 2026 report surveyed 1,888 cybersecurity professionals, including 494 in Europe, in May 2026.