Algorithmic Mediation and Criteria of Competence: The Reconfiguration of Professional Qualification in Brazilian Developer Communities (2022–2026)

Abstract

This article examines how the incorporation of generative artificial intelligence into software development reconfigures the criteria by which competence, qualification and employability are produced, demonstrated and assessed. It departs from the hypothesis that algorithmic mediation alters not only how much work is required, but what comes to count as professional competence. The empirical basis is a Brazilian longitudinal series built from three Reddit communities — r/brdev, r/conselhodecarreira and r/antitrampo — between January 2022 and July 2026. The design combines a thematic census of 202,387 posts, a conversational corpus of 79,068 utterances, an analytical universe of 3,910 units and a qualitative subsample of 390 utterances submitted to socio-argumentative coding with propositional reconstruction. Findings show that the diffusion of generative AI is accompanied by a shift in the technical object, growth in practical use, and mobilisation of the technology within conversations that did not begin about it. Four processes are identified: the declining capacity of final artefacts to signal individual competence; the erosion of seniority as an argumentative resource; the appropriation of productivity gains as work intensification; and the conversion of the tool into an unstable organisational metric. The corpus identifies mechanisms of selectivity without allowing estimation of their distribution by class, gender or race.