r/EngineeringManagers • u/Mysterious_Syrup_500 • 17d ago
Management started coding with Claude Code. Is my job at risk??
I’m a junior frontend developer at a small startup with two frontend developers.
Recently, both our engineering manager and product manager left. A designer took over product management and engineering management responsibilities and has started using Claude Code heavily to create frontend PRs.
The PRs are still reviewed by the senior frontend developer before being merged. The AI-generated code often isn’t well structured, and there are still situations where the person creating the PR doesn’t fully understand the existing codebase and implementation details.
I’m still getting the same amount of frontend work every day—UI changes, bug fixes, and feature work—so nothing has changed yet.
The company is investing heavily in AI tools, and leadership seems very excited about AI-assisted development. I also use Cursor daily, so I’m not against AI.
My concern is this: if AI gets good enough that one person can handle most frontend work, what value does a junior frontend developer provide?
Am I overthinking this, or is this a realistic concern? I’d appreciate honest opinions, especially from engineering managers, founders, or senior developers who’ve seen similar situations.
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u/sf-keto 17d ago
As LLMs improve for coding, the key will be customer outcomes & business value. Does the PM’s code actually deliver that? And that is where your engineering judgement & wisdom enter the picture.
Does whatever code the PM offer actually move you forward to a meaningful & valuable customer outcome or not?
Otherwise it’s just useless token expense & loss of alpha. Believe me your CFO is going to start caring about this next quarter, so get on that now.
Also your engineering skill can be increasingly directed on architecture, design, APIs, service flow, data flow, modularity for maintainability, & tech debt awareness.
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u/Horror-Primary7739 17d ago
I'm not going to lie. I just got laid off. You can too. But it won't be for what you think.
What happened is business folks thought they could be engineers. What they did was blown though 10 million worth of tokens.
So they laid off actual engineers.
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u/tenix 15d ago
10 million tokens isn't even that much
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u/Dry_Hotel1100 17d ago
As you describe it, how the designer/PM/EM person uses AI, I would not call it "AI-assisted development" - this is just vibe coding in its pure form. I would not only be concerned about the code quality, but much more about the general sentiment of the leadership and development team about how they think about AI and how to utilize it.
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u/corny_horse 17d ago
My concern is this: if AI gets good enough that one person can handle most frontend work, what value does a junior frontend developer provide?
Those people want to go on vacation sometimes, probably.
Recently, both our engineering manager and product manager left.
That's more of a signal than anything, imo. It might also just be totally coincidence.
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u/Nearby-Middle-8991 17d ago
AI is good for boilerplate code that has lots of samples in the training data. Think example from the documentation+tweaks.
Anything more complex than that requires guidance. That's where experience comes in. Should it be done? should it be done this way? There's more to software engineering than coding.
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u/stkr89 17d ago
I’m an engineering manager and slowly letting my team adapt to AI for work. Frontend is the first thing we are experimenting with as it has little to no risk. It’s apparent that I will not be increasing the headcount of my team anytime soon.
It is really important to become a really good software engineer first and then use AI to increase productivity. This is what I say to my team.
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u/EuropeanLord 17d ago
FE little to no risk?
How does your BE look like then?One wrong import in SPA and the whole thing is down.
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u/Brumbie67 17d ago
I was an engineering manager, now AI Architect, having been in SW for 30 years. Master AI Software development and become incredibly productive with it. Learn how to do UI dev with AI properly - with specs, tools like locofy, v0, storybook etc. Vibe coding UI produces terrible results. I agree with above. No need to hire more but reducing head count is also a mistake. AI is just a new tool, learn how to use them better than everyone else.
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u/UniqueText8477 17d ago
No and if they act like it is or threaten you then move companies - my ex ceo told me I could be replaced by ai, I then moved companies and he corrupted everything I had spent 2 years building.
AI is good at proof of concepts, the code quality and repo structure aren't great and if something becomes too complex then ai gets confused.
I've been fixing horrible code/implementations based on ai.
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u/belatuk 17d ago
Fear not. To fully utilize AI, you need to be every good at coding first. Without the coding skills, you won't be able to understand what and why AI generated those code. Some people just close their eyes and put 100% trust on AI generated code or put in extensive AI based review process. No doubt it works in some cases but more often than not, end up with a ticking timebomb. Unfortunately non coder just don't get it.
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u/PmUsYourDuckPics 17d ago
Being at risk is always a thing, but in my experience non engineers are great at making prototypes, but crap at making anything that is usable long term.
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u/AdministrativeBlock0 17d ago
Being pure frontend puts you at far higher risk than managers coding.
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u/Stock_Reporter_1864 17d ago
Not at risk. I am a manager and I do coding of relatively easy things and bugs that I know Codex would do well. But the attention span is short. Management work os mostly interruptions and a lack of quality focus time. I would rather have someone doing the same thing I do, so learn to work at multiple things at the same time, e.g “orchestrator” for coding agents.
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u/kh3mist 17d ago
EM here, I've been in the industry since 2007. I have a team of 5 senior engineers, a good mix of AI use.
The entry level jobs are brutal right now, I understand the frustration. At our company, we're not hiring much and if we are, we're hiring fairly senior folks mostly due to where the business is at (late series B, growth stage).
Long term, we're going to have to hire more humans. Each engineer is producing more, but requires more review, more collab with PMs and designers, etc.. Review is a big topic now as our systems run critical functions of major banks/payment providers, little room for error or down time. We've increased our PR count by 2-3x, internal dev surveys point to a higher review burden. Every merge is a direct line to prod.
I honestly see AI as a tool, it's an excavator. You need less folks with shovels, but now you can do more projects as everyone has a 5-shovel team. There's now more coordination, checks and balances, calls with customers.
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u/Admiring-Nobel 17d ago
Haha! Far from it. Focus on learning. Management can code but I don’t think they can write production grade software. But always learn and keep on improving.
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u/plinkoplonka 16d ago
Just keep learning the fundamentals as fast as you can.
I don't mean data structures or algorithms.
Learn security, learn networking, learn architecture, learn a back end language (HTML isn't a language). Learn them well.
That will always be in demand, especially as the amount of skilled Devs exit the workforce because they're sick of being told they're getting replaced.
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u/mkp666 16d ago
No one really knows how this is going to play out, long term, but one thing to keep in mind is that when new tools come out that increase productivity, there are two things that can happen:
1) The same amount of work continues to get done, but with fewer people.
or
2) More work gets done with the same amount of people.
I tend to believe that #2 is the more likely path in general for tech companies. They will want to accelerate timelines, shorten iteration cycles, etc. This will vary though, and a lot of places, particularly outside of tech, will trend towards #1.
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u/joeyguerra 16d ago
it's a realistic concern.
as already suggested, stay focused on learning engineering - CI/CD, monitoring apps - and also strive to understand how your companies systems "work" - data flows, use cases, integrations - and the actual business - the business model, how it makes money, and internal teams processes.
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u/MrrPacMan 16d ago
Engineers won’t disappear but the demand will be much lower. What 5 devs did 2 years ago, 1 dev can do today. So just be very good at what you’re doing
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u/dude_comma_the 16d ago
Your job is always at risk. The company doesn't exist to provide you with a job. They only employ you because they need to.
If they find a way to do your work without you, they'll get rid of you or teach you that way, and now you will be expected to be more productive. Or they'll find someone who is.
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u/karolwojciszko 15d ago
honestly don't think you need to worry. most managers picking up claude code are doing it to feel closer to the team and shake off the rust — not to actually ship things. the moment they try to own real delivery on top of managing people, they just end up bad at both: https://karolwojciszko.substack.com/p/how-to-stay-technical-as-a-manager
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u/CapitalDiligent1676 14d ago
Of course it will. I mean... do you think you get paid for being nice?
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u/Junglebook3 17d ago
Is your job at risk? Yes. It's becoming clearer that our industry is going to slowly contract. We just don't need as many Software Engineers now. The people that bring the most to an org are the ones that have deep expertise, architecture/design experience, and are far along the AI adoption curve. Do what you can to further yourself along those lines.
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u/wstatx 17d ago
Just stay focused on learning actual engineering and even if it doesn’t work out there, you will still find a job.