I missed the twist also. When he said he was surrounded by Juliuses I thought he meant his other colleagues had gotten to their positions by cheating with LLMs to look like Julius.
Re-read the last 7 paragraphs, quoting paragraph[-7]:
> On my side, I tried to forget Julius. But, recently, my boss came to me with a huge smile. He had met the salesperson from a company that had amazed him with its products. Artificial intelligence software that would, I quote, boost our productivity! [emphasis added]
I simply did not follow the transition between these two paragraphs:
> I now have an artificial intelligence software that helps me code. Another that helps me search for information. A third one that summarises and writes my emails. I am not allowed to disable them.
> At every moment, every second, I feel surrounded by Julius. By dozens of Juliuses.
The first paragraph is my situation and I like it, so the second paragraph didn't follow for me. My inner voice had a short mental hitch where I thought "was something missing between those? Should I slow down and stop skimming?" Then my eye jumps to "My boss came to see me. He told me that the team’s productivity was dangerously declining" and I decide "the paragraph before must have been referring to the team members using the AI tools", and I've missed the point of the story.
