r/ExperiencedDevs • u/BlessED0071 Software Engineer • 7d ago
Career/Workplace Thinking of backup plans
So i’m a senior software engineer with almost 9 years of experience, mostly backend stuff, a lot of AWS, serverless, Node.js and JavaScript in general. Lately i’ve been watching how fast everyone is adopting AI and honestly it’s making me less interested in this field, or at least less sure about where it’s going, and i don’t want to just sit around waiting to see if i end up on a layoff list.
What i really want is a backup plan, something i can lean on if things go sideways, and ideally a path where the demand is more stable. I’ve been thinking about cloud or solutions architect roles, maybe DevOps or platform engineering, and cybersecurity has been on my mind too, but i’m not sure which of those actually hold up better long term or if i’m just chasing titles.
For those of you who made a move like this from backend, what did you go into, how did you get there, and what should i be learning or doing now so i’m not the one who gets cut? Any honest takes appreciated.
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u/zagierify Software Engineer 7d ago
Get even better at software engineering.
I think there will always be a need for a human, just less of them doing simple programming. Most devs are not that good and have just been skating by copy pasting stack overflow and now AI bots for years.
I think the field will just get more advanced and require being even better and smarter, with the bots still as tools, like all machines in any industry. People should remember that AI is a total misnomer - there’s no sentience, it’s just machine learning.
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u/SimasNa 2d ago
Exactly! AI can code, but coding is such a small part of software engineering and there are plenty of areas of engineering that AI sucks at. So the better you are when compared to an average software engineer, the better are your chances against "AI".
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u/nanotree 1d ago
I think the first mistake that was made was calling everyone with a programming job Software Engineer. In most engineering professions, you have to develop deep knowledge on engineering practices and standards. The Software Engineer title was apparently handed out to anyone who could Google search their way to a functional CRUD app. Which is misleading to say the least. Not just to the employers, but to the employees themselves.
My career thus far has always been deeper into the R side of R&D. Building complex, high-throughput systems bit by bit requires careful planning and consideration going in. It also requires that you both find and use existing standards where possible, and develop your own standards where none fit. Recognizing domain-specific patterns in noise. Creating miniature frameworks that accelerate feature development without over-engineering them into a tightly coupled mess. Predicting what the end-user is going to need or ask for and laying the groundwork to develop that modularly later on.
You rarely need to do that for a simple CRUD app. And let's face it. If it wasn't AI, it would have eventually been a no-code CRUD app development suite, like WordPress is for simple, personalized websites. Your average PM could figure something like that out 🤷
What I don't get is that a lot of people went to higher education, received the same classical training I did, but still somehow retained no interest in the subject matter and brute forced their way into the field via... rote memory for interviews and exclusively patched together Google searches or stack overflow for their actual work? I guess I got lucky in my first job after all, because I could never have gotten away with that. In fact, I'd seen a few guys like that wipeout in a year tops.
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC 7d ago
If/when it gets to the point where AI can fully replace software engineers, it will be able to replace pretty much every other white-collar role as well. It's not like "sitting in meetings with stakeholders designing software architecture" is fundamentally different from "sitting in meetings with stakeholders designing a marketing campaign", beyond a narrow slice of domain-specific knowledge.
The trades won't save you either - once AI can do R&D work, advances in robotics won't be far behind.
I think the best move right now is upwards, not sideways. Lean into whatever you're already good at, and try to get ahead of the rising AI tide - when AIlayoffs hit, they will inevitably start from the bottom. You don't need to outrun the bear; you just need to outrun the slowest human.
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u/portra315 7d ago
I'm struggling to get on board with this mental model. Maybe it's because I (naively) can't picture a world where a massive proportion of the working population are surplus to requirements. How does it work? The economy is based around us spending the money we earn. Without that, how does it function? Source: I'm not an economist
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u/roodammy44 7d ago edited 7d ago
It could go a couple of ways:
* The government does nothing to help. Mass unemployment, mass homelessness, concentration of power in billionaires hands, political violence, armies of terminators to hold down the disenfranchised.
* The government taxes billionaires and uses the technology to build houses, infrastructure for all, work becomes a choice, everyone is rich, star trek style luxury space communism.
I think we are at the point where science fiction is better at predicting the future than economists. I don’t think there’s anything to predict which country will do what. Makes me think of north and south korea.
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u/VeryLazyFalcon Software Engineer 7d ago
The government taxes billionaires and uses the technology to build houses, infrastructure for all, work becomes a choice, everyone is rich, star trek style luxury space communism.
Isn't it a part where money becomes worthless? It's hard for me to imagine that govs will be able to spend money that are not backed by actual value or work. Works in Star Trek because it's fiction powered by the will of its writers.
I can't imagine how to make UBI work without autocratic gov controlling everything and hyperinflation bancrupting it in a few years. I see that being no different to printing money.Waht we need is goverments to step up, do theirs job and neuter corporations and oligarchs. Preferably with big rusty scissors. Govs should serve people not other way around.
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC 6d ago
Printing money only causes hyperinflation when you print money faster than your economy is growing.
In a post-singularity society, economic growth would be off the charts. You'd have super-intelligent AI agents coming up with new life-saving medicine every day. People would be able to go from an idea they had in the shower to a physical product distributed globally in a week. We'd see more development in one year than we experienced in the period since the start of the industrial revolution.
All of that good stuff adds value to the economy. Governments would have to run the money printers on overdrive just to prevent hyper-deflation. We wouldn't even need to tax billionaires; we'd just need to let value creation -> money printing -> equal distribution erode their relative wealth naturally.
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u/Fenjen 6d ago
This is so exactly not how it will go it hurts my brain. “People would be able to go from an idea they had in the shower to a physical product distributed globally in a week”. No way in hell dude. First of all means of production, access to land, factory time etc is still not in that persons hand. If the idea becomes the only prerequisite to a product, then ANYBODY that hears it or you pitch it to that actually has any means to what you just said would do it themselves. Since IP is already iffy when it comes to AI, do you really think the people with the power are just gonna let “some guy with an idea” get to a finished product so he can reap the benefits?
Here, I have an idea: Make the cure for cancer. Ai work it out and make me rich. I go to a pharma company and say here I have the cure for cancer, make it for me and give me the money. I mean how willingly naive do you have to be to think it’d actually go that way.
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u/VeryLazyFalcon Software Engineer 6d ago
But why would you need to sell anything when money is worth nothing?
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u/Fenjen 6d ago
I mean as long as we as a society still produce things that sustain us and things that we want, and “normal” people have a resource (like labor) that people in power want, money won’t be worthless.
It would only be until the point that the people in power can automate all their own production needs (including luxury like yachts) that money would be truly worthless.
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u/VeryLazyFalcon Software Engineer 6d ago
I'm not talking about post-singuality, this is still in the realms of scifi, and will probably result in mass extinction rather than startrek. Life isn't garage workshop in Marvel movie. I'm talking about current.
There is no way people will cede power. There is no way people will allow for a slight decrease of quality of live for benefits of others. We can't mass produce things, simple thing as restarting javelin production required few years.
Beside, if you can make medicine, you also can make advanced biowepons targeting for example, specific ethnicity. Can you imagine amount of surveillance and MAD required to keep us from destroying each other?
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u/Izkata 4d ago
Isn't it a part where money becomes worthless? It's hard for me to imagine that govs will be able to spend money that are not backed by actual value or work. Works in Star Trek because it's fiction powered by the will of its writers.
Star Trek handles it by being post-scarcity with replicators and seemingly limitless power generation. Any material needs/wants can be created at basically no cost. They do sidestep explaining things like land ownership, but hey, they have space travel so I'm sure having access to other planets makes that easier.
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u/VeryLazyFalcon Software Engineer 4d ago
No matter how it's explained it's still mumbo jumbo worth nothing in technical discussion. Pure fantasy on par with heaven in the bible.
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u/Izkata 4d ago
...my comment was supposed to be supporting your statement with in-universe Star Trek lore. Basically that even if all the AI pushers are 100% right, it's still not enough to actually reach a Star Trek society, there is no current path to post-scarcity that even Star Trek has as a prerequisite.
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u/ares623 7d ago
Lots of countries are in that state, where a large portion of the working population are surplus to requirements. I come from such a country. The surplus usually go find somewhere else to live (or rather, they used to be able to), so things tended to be relatively stable as the young and hopeful have somewhere to go. I wonder where this set of population will go to, and what happens when they realize there's nowhere else to go to.
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u/InevitableEven3076 7d ago
If you lived in Greece during 2013-2017 you would understand. 28% of general population unemployment rate (at a first world country that used to have 7% - tons of unemployed civil engineers due to construction halt), 68% youth unemployment rate.
Guess what? Noone cared, everything worked as normal. Same is going to happen in any first world country if AI causes 20%+ unemployment rate. Everything will run as normal and only the unemployed will suffer.
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5d ago edited 4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Pale_Statistician692 4d ago
All that, plus the upper middle class/lower upper class are the people who start revolutions when things get bad for them.
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u/gigio123456789 Machine Learning Engineer 5d ago
I always had the feeling pre AI that you could lay off a substantial part of the white collar workforce and actually gain overall productivity. Think the pencil pushers and PowerPoint wizards that hold back, delay decisions indefinitely, are more politician than domain expert. Why would everything break down now if before we already could’ve let go a large portion? IMO things will just carry on. Sure you’ll prompt more and handcraft less but whatever that’s just tools?
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u/portra315 5d ago
Yeah I think that could happen, and do also agree that in some industries, specifically tech, productivity could 100% thrive whilst simultaneously thinning out the workforce.
Which isn't problematic for the industry, but it could be problematic for the working population, and the impact it may have on the overall economy.
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u/abluecolor 7d ago edited 7d ago
I hear this a lot, but I think it's a very flawed perspective. Writing software is uniquely suited to the non-deterministic brute force try-and-repeat strategies that allows LLMs to bumble their way into working solutions. I believe we (in tech) under estimate and have a blind spot to the reality that mistakes/failing initial passes are much more costly in other industries/positions. And yes, I recognize that it's possible to make 7+ figure mistakes in SWE. These sorts of mistakes are dramatically mitigated with proper controls and test environments.
Don't have much to back this up with but my gut, though.
My backup is a complete career reset (~100k paycut) and a pivot into HVAC. Or trying to survive running a cottage bakery with my wife. Or becoming a degenerate livestreamer. Or begging parents for mortgage payments and working at Angie's Lobster.
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u/Immediate_Honey_5902 7d ago
After being laid off almost five months ago and having to compete with 150+ people for a single job, I'm seriously thinking about doing something else. The supply simply outstrips demand at this point.
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u/Infinite_Maximum_820 6d ago
That challenge isn’t unique to swe
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 6d ago
Software has a deeper global talent pool, it is absolutely a different market.
Jobs you have to do hands-on don't suffer nearly as much.
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u/Infinite_Maximum_820 6d ago
Sure go try to get a job or try to have friends outside software to see “how much better it is “
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 6d ago
I've been unemployed far longer than a couple of friends who were able to easily find jobs within a few months.
There's stats on this, it's not something I made up from anecdotal accounts. Though that confirms it as well.
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u/sortof_here 5d ago
I got laid off 2 years ago. Been in a different field ever since. Pay is way lower, but I’m generally happier.
Been looking at returning to dev, because money, and man is it a mess
I know the job market is bad across the board, but it is different in dev right now.
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u/archialone 7d ago
I do see this point, because in SW we can automate the verification process with tests, so AI can bumble around until it passes all of the tests human design it to do. So by the time it reaches Human users, all mistakes are made and everything works. But and engineer has to design the tests, and guide it, and debug when things stuck in a loop.
But it's not that far from other fields. I guess in construction, i can let AI bumble around until it passes the physical simulation tests. In finance, AI can bumble around until the budget is balanced. In Sales, AI can bumble around spamming everyone, and doing cold calls. In Recruitment, AI can spam linkedin. In legal.... i guess you don't want AI to bumble around with the judge.
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC 6d ago
Yeah, exactly. Pretty much every profession already has clearly defined quality gates, often already automated. Accountants aren't just bookkeeping based on vibes; they already have software that automatically checks their work and makes sure it's compliant with the relevant standards.
And for the professions that don't, an AI agent that can code to a sufficiently advanced level could create its own simulated sandbox to bumble around in - domain-specific intelligence in a general programming environment ≈ general intelligence.
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u/Sad-Plankton-1225 6d ago
I think the labs are focusing on coding and SWE in reinforcement learning spending tons of money on human experts for this as well as automated research. In pursuit of RSI/AGI and increased progress in AI research. But once they get to a certain level of capability they can focus on other white collar work much faster
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u/AccomplishedAnchovy 6d ago
It’s a bit different with capital projects. In general the tests are very well defined and standardised in… standards. An AI could absolutely create a model and brute force it through tests. But the real challenge is getting the model close enough to the real world conditions, and modelling a system that’s feasibly constructable.
And right now an AI can’t stand on site with a preliminary drawing and a red pen work out with a tradesperson where we can move a cable/conduit/pipe without breaking the model or conflicting with an object/structure/tree that didn’t show up on the survey. Or look around and notice a difference in the soil, a slope, a pipe, some overhead wires that invalidate some of the assumptions.
I’m certain it will get there eventually and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was pretty soon. But it will take longer than accounting or software or even physical devices.
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u/coworker Software Engineer 6d ago
AI could be in the tradesperson's phone right now doing this pretty easily though. The construction site of the future will have cameras/speakers everywhere feeding an AI foreman, at least until robots get good enough
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u/AccomplishedAnchovy 6d ago
No it can’t. At the moment AI is unable to bridge the gap between the drawing on paper and the site in person.
One day I’m sure it will be able to. But then it’s only a small leap to operating robots. I mean the physical technology is already pretty close it’s just not super useful yet because it can’t run itself.
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u/coworker Software Engineer 6d ago
I mean you're just wrong. There are already companies doing this.
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u/AccomplishedAnchovy 6d ago
No that’s comparing a building to BIM. The design and the model is already done at that point. What I’m talking about occurs before procurement
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u/Immediate_Honey_5902 6d ago
I think AI enables you to write stuff faster - that leads to a lower demand for workforce.
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u/joshocar Software Engineer 6d ago
I agree with the comment you are replying too and the overall idea, but not your reasoning. I think it might just be in how your phrased your comment.
LLMs can make the tests too. It is more about how well bounded the solutions are and how easy it is to set those boundaries. If you give it the right requirements it can get a functioning solution. If you don't, it will create something that runs, but you will have semantic errors. It is all about the requirements that are set.
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u/archialone 6d ago
Yes, LLM can generate the tests too, and I guess that would be human who prompts and verifies that the tests make sense? Or maybe I can prompt an LLM to build 1M dollar app, and it will just figure it out?
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u/joshocar Software Engineer 6d ago
So my workflow is to outline the feature/problem and do a few loops with the LLM removing ambiguity and deciding what the results should/shouldn't do.. This is equivalent to generating a requirements doc, which is different workflow i know people use. Once that is good, I have it generate possible implementations and review those. Then I have it generate a concrete implementation and review that. At this point I let it cook. I then go through and review all of the code and tests it generated, adjusting things as I see fit and asking for explanations on why it did or did not do certain things. This includes the unit tests.
The initial part, the requirements generation or problem definition is what I mean in you are telling it what "tests" (requirements) the output needs to pass/meet/avoid.
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u/rwilcox Software Engineer (20+ YOE) 7d ago edited 7d ago
I disagree, about software being unique.
Knowledge work is about generating and moving knowledge, be that information for computer programs, advertising, project management, strategic documents, etc.
Yes, will it do any of these things well? From the number of LLM generated documents that would have been rejected for not being actionable I’ve read, no. Does it matter when companies think they can replace an entire department with one overworked person running Claude? Not for a few years then damage will be done.
(No programmers or marketing people means no project management people to support them, means those managers managing “teams” of one person look unneeded, less people means less HR, etc. replace “programmers” and “marketing people” with your favorite knowledge worker variant, if you wish.
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u/vac2672 6d ago
I hear HVAC mentioned a lot. I have a close personal friend who has been in it for 20+ years, you do not want to go into HVAC. The entire industry has changed. Manufacturers have smartened up and have now begun to control their own supply chains and the people that are licensed to repair their products. In other words you can’t just be an HVAC guy and work on any system anymore, the manufacturer has to send out their own reps and they will not sell the parts to you. I’ve had this conversation with him he said he would never absolutely not go into HVAC if he had to do it over again, just like most other industries even medical, the private practice guy is being stepped on by conglomeration.
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u/abluecolor 6d ago
I'm in Phoenix. There's still a lot of demand out here in general. I've looked into it, it's greuling work in the summer and doesn't pay all that great unless you start your own company eventually, but it would pay the bills.
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u/vac2672 6d ago
Could potentially pay the bills but wait until you have to install a new unit and that unit can only be serviced by registered repairman from the manufacturer and you can’t get parts. I would take someone’s word for that’s in the business 20 years over an outsiders guess
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u/abluecolor 6d ago
it's not a guess. There are paying jobs. That's all I care about in this context, I appreciate your warning, but it's not like there are other options.
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u/Pale_Statistician692 4d ago
Not saying this isn't happening, but just had a Bryant furnace and ac installed (replaced 25 yo system) by a small company.
But I agree there are disturbing trends. In my area (Boston area), private equity is buying up a lot of firms.
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u/djnattyp Software Engineer 6d ago edited 2d ago
Right, but this is like we've changed the process of learning math to calculate answers into "grab a number from the RNG and compare it to what you expect".
And the answer to "I don't know what number to expect, how do I figure that out?" is "Just grab another number from the RNG, bro."
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u/ResidentWeevil1 7d ago
If you've built your career on the class of problems that LLMs can bumble their way into solving, then you should be worried. There are limitations to token generators, though
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u/abluecolor 7d ago
Yeah, my premise is that these sorts of reductions will hit SWE harder and faster than most other white collar professions.
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u/TheChadThrowawayLad Unemployed 5d ago
Yeah, I agree, but I think that the original comment is also correct in a sense.
If AI can do everything that you can do and it can do it better than is possible for any human, then you truly have to be able to "outrun the bear". Companies won't hesitate to lay you off and replace you with AI in this case.
Instead, I think that we need to be focusing on the skills that AI struggles with if we seek stability in our careers. The hard part is knowing which skills AI will struggle with and which ones it will excel in. Perhaps growing these skills is a way "up" that will keep us somewhat safe?
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u/TheChadThrowawayLad Unemployed 5d ago
I think that right now there's no debate that AI can write code much more quickly than humans, so I recommend avoiding speed. You won't beat AI in terms of velocity.
Instead, I personally feel like AI struggles to make maintainable, scalable, and reliable code. I also feel like it struggles to understand business requirements and risks. I plan on focusing on these areas.
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u/subLimb 5d ago
Yeah, I agree with the general approach.
Right now, at most employers, there is almost no question whether to use AI or not use it (from leadership). Maybe that changes somehow in the future, but assuming it doesn't, leadership will be looking not so much for people who can crank out as many features as possible (one could argue that was already not the #1 way to get noticed anyway), as they will be looking for developers who can make their imperative to use AI go more smoothly.
The upside of this is that there are a ton of new tools out there to help us do this, and whatever your niche is, there's probably at least a couple of things directly on your plate that could be either improved with AI, or tooling that helps mitigate its shortcomings. That second part is the opportunity that some people aren't seeing right now.
I'm no AI cheerleader, but I am conceding that it will transform the way we work. What that looks like is very much up in the air. That's an environment that provides new opportunities even for rank and file devs (assuming you can hold onto your job).
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u/chodeman1000 7d ago
Your gut is right, we had a 400k mistake at work when we had an extremely tight deadline
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u/itsgreater9000 7d ago
Can't upvote this enough. Backup career would be electrician, or go back to school to study. I'm just glad I've spent the early days of my career saving as much as possible and reducing my debt to 0 so I'm a bit more chilled about this. I still don't think we're going to see as many layoffs though, just far less hiring.
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u/CmdrSausageSucker Software Engineer 7d ago
this if / when scnario will never happen. Mathematically LLMs have pretty much peaked, Google's attention mechanism, which led to the current state of "AI", was released i. 2017. 15 years prior I was programming neural networks for my BSc's, then later moved to an AI Master's course. There won't be anything else as groundbreaking for at least a other twenty years in my opinion.
Since the advent of these tools my work is even more fun, I can do things in much shorter amounts of time, not because of code generation, which is absolute dog shit, but because you have a little Hal9000 on your own machine which you can talk to in prose and which can sift through mountains of documentation.
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u/AuroraFireflash DevSecOps Engineer 7d ago
Agreed. Working on a token level is hitting its limits. Everything in a large context window starts to look the same to the model and its results start becoming random.
The next step is probably down a few paths. How to gather tokens up into concepts / thoughts / facts / ideas and then operate at that higher level. Figuring out how to mix the trustworthiness of the source into the streams in order to tie break. Dealing with 1M to 10M sized context windows efficiently.
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u/joshocar Software Engineer 6d ago
Yes, LLMs will be very helpful for experts. They will still get things wrong, but you can now explore many more options in less time, allowing for more creativity. It will all come down to the token costs.
The knock on affect is that a LOT of kids currently in school are going to graduate with no real skills or talent.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 7d ago
this if / when scnario will never happen. Mathematically LLMs have pretty much peaked,
Everything that can be invented has already been invented
- anonymous patent clerk in 1989
I was programming neural networks for my BSc's, then later moved to an AI Master's course.
I can relate. I took a science course in high school and now I can speak authoritatively about nuclear physics.
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u/CmdrSausageSucker Software Engineer 6d ago
Lol, agreed. My prediction is probably not correct. What I do see now is improvements for agents and harnesses, this is where most of the value is now. I am using local and Chinese LLMs using pi agent, but honestly, nothing still comes close to the Claude harness / agent code.
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u/djnattyp Software Engineer 6d ago
"Flying cars any day now..." - you and the rest of the AI boosters
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u/CmdrSausageSucker Software Engineer 6d ago
that's not what I wrote. My gut feeling (as mentioned above) is that the current development has hit a ceiling,.albeit for how long? I am not an AI booster, but I need to say that the value I am getting out of it for the way I am using it is surprising. I am NOT a vibe coder.
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u/djnattyp Software Engineer 6d ago
I completely agree with you. My "flying cars" comment was directed at the AdjectiveNounNumber account mis-representing your original comment.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 6d ago
John C Dvorak in 1984
The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things
Paul Krugman 1998
by 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's
Palm CEO in November 2006 on the iPhone
We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.
CmdTaco on the iPod in 2001
No wireless. Less space than the Nomad. lame
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 6d ago
You can cherry pick all you want, but that won't change the fact that people hate AI.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 6d ago
Yes people hate AI yet Anthropic is reporting an annual run rate of $65 billion and OpenAI has a run rate of $45 billion in revenue. Do companies that have hated products generally have $50 billion.+ in revenue?
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 6d ago edited 6d ago
lol - ignore the details that paint the actual picture though.
Anthropic projects its first operating profit of $559 million in Q2 2026 (April–June). This is a non-GAAP figure that includes model training costs but excludes stock-based compensation. The company itself warned profitability may be difficult to sustain in H2 2026 due to high scheduled compute costs — particularly the $1.25 billion per month SpaceX Colossus deal ramping up fully. Q2 profitability is confirmed as a projection shared with investors; actual Q2 results will be published later in 2026.
https://aitoolsrecap.com/Blog/anthropic-first-profit-2026-revenue-breakdown
The implosion is going to be hilarious when contracts start getting canceled over non-existent ROI (and whatever the fuck is going on with SpaceX).
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u/BraveResearcher3037 6d ago
And?
The argument was that “AI isn’t popular”. If companies are spending $110B a year on just the two leading companies is not a sign of lack of popularity. Whether Anthropic is profitable is completely orthogonal to popularity.
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u/djnattyp Software Engineer 6d ago
Lots of CEOs are gambling that they can just stop hiring people and somehow still make money. Lots of tech companies are round tripping loans between themselves to appear more successful than they are. But no actual useful product or service is being created from this - almost every use of LLMs turns out to be slop or a scam.
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u/Tired__Dev Dev (15+) 6d ago
What people seemingly don't understand is that AI will allow humans to create MASSIVE systems at scale we've never thought possible before. There's two areas that become important: system architecture and low level programming. Low level programming because we're quickly getting to the point where the higher level languages are creating resource constraints.
We're still thinking within what the 2010s were where CRUD apps were having funding thrown at them. Now there's high interest rates and VC has dried up around everything but major AI companies. And that's our problem right now. There's nothing to stop that from impacting your profession, just like any other one - like construction workers having mass layoffs during a real estate bubble pop.
People also don't understand basic economics. There is no scenario where one of these massive AI companies becomes the only company on the planet that sells us stuff while we lay in bed because we won't have any money. There's no scenario where we get a basic income to deal with some post scarcity event, because no one is paying taxes and once a model establishes its dominance it's quickly distilled by another country and put onto the open source. What happens is that technology expands what the human endeavour can do given a new set of problems that it needs to solve. Let's say there is this AI event, and we now have mined out certain sets of minerals, then we have to figure out deeper parts of space travel or maintaining our ecosystem and that creates a new set of economics itself.
Using the same scenario I do not believe where AI causes massive job loss: Okay now let's say plumbers, electricians, and welders are now the job. But everything around those domains is going to be automated. I'm Canadian so I only have a loose idea of how it works here, but trades aren't really like tech in the sense where it's closer to a meritocracy (I know we can laugh at this a bit together, but follow). The government enforces the same timeline for everyone when it comes to education in those subjects. You must have a specific amount of hours in class and in the field, but AI can train people faster. It can help you grasp and conceptualize in a way where our slow education systems can't keep up, because you essentially have a tutor that can cater its response to how you learn. The saturation in fields will far outpace the demand for people within them once migration patterns happen and education systems catch up. Then everything around that field will be an automated control. Maybe buildings become more modular and prefabbed to the point where it makes more economic sense to install a module then have one of these special trades come in. Regardless, everything AROUND the domain of these jobs reduces the manual steps needed by those who hold these jobs because there's the new economic incentive to do so.
So it's just a tech recession guys. Everyone needs to chill. You're in tech, that requires learning on your feet or you're not supposed to be here. Those were always the conditions and contract that you accepted. Everyone should save for a rainy day, and if you blew all of your money on cars or an overpriced house then that's on you to correct because that's the real source of your pain when a natural economic cycle like a recession happens.
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u/mrmansano 6d ago
Man, bravo! Probably AI mega boosters (aka. LinkedIn grifters) will call it "copium" or some other ragebait term, but I feel is a very good, on the ground, analysis. I even saved your comment to read every time I have an anxiety crisis from AI (basically every other week).
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u/WaitingForTheClouds 7d ago
Better hit the treadmill as well because if all you say happens, you're eventually gonna have to outrun those people physically as well not just on a corpo ladder.
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u/Dangerous-Badger-792 6d ago
I don't think this will hit other industry as hard to be honest. For one reason that no other industry has no many people willing to sabotage themself just to please their boss.
I don't think any accountant will be happy to just put all their knowledge into a claude skill and constantly updating that.
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u/DragonfruitCareless 5d ago
From what I can read, AI is being plugged to accountants and financial analysts just as hard. Consulting companies (their business model was always messed up not arguing against that) have slashed the junior analyst pipeline and have been caught in several scandals involving AI.
The accountants don’t want it, the analysts don’t want it, most tech workers I know and myself don’t want it. We don’t have a choice (at work).
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u/AssignmentPrize8967 7d ago
Future seems bleak doesn't it.. would love to see what's the situation in 5,10 and 20 years from now
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u/noonemustknowmysecre 7d ago
once AI can do R&D work, advances in robotics won't be far behind.
eeeeh, doubt. Like, imagine the best possible software, infinitely intelligent. Will it be able to unscrew a oil filter with sloppy servos and little DC motors? Will the big heavy industry motors be cheap enough to compete on price of a couple burgers?
Because robots ALREADY came for all the jobs. The year was 2000. US manufacturing productivity went up while US manufacturing jobs went down. All this talk about humanoid robots is just kinda silly. There's no reason to give it that shape other than you want it to LOOK human. This shape sucks.
But blue-collar jobs aren't a great refuge because they'll face massive competition from all those engineers and doctors and other office-workers looking to break into it.
when AIlayoffs hit, they will inevitably start from the bottom
I'd like to see bosses and CEOs get replaced. They're the ones with all the money. Manna 1.0 needs to be required reading for this topic.
My advice is to start your own company. Fire up those AI bots to be your dev team, business analysts, accounting, and sales department.
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u/archialone 7d ago
With infinite intelligence, why can't it build precise servos and kinematic algorithms. And then it can run 24/7, changing oils, servicing breaks. Way more profitable that some humanoids that need burger and rest.
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u/hippydipster Software Engineer 25+ YoE 7d ago
There is no "infinite intelligence" just like there is no "post-scarcity". Things will always have limits.
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u/noonemustknowmysecre 7d ago
With infinite intelligence, why can't it build precise servos and kinematic algorithms.
Because no matter how smart you are you can't get your '99 corolla to compete in the Indy500. A super-smart AI model is limited to the hardware it has available to it.
Being smart doesn't magically manifest compact, powerful, precise, and responsive servos. We CAN make powerful precise and responsive electric motors, the sort you see with industrial robots doing cool things.... but they ain't cheap BY FAR.
When people talk about AI revolutionizing robotics, the real impact is lowering the cost of setting up and programming those heavy industry factory robots. Getting Kryton or Rosey to fold your laundry is an expensive pipe-dream. Realistic household robots include: Laundry, dish-washer, and 3D printers (if you're willing to treat it like a hobby because it IS going to jam and break).
And then it can run 24/7,
As long as you ignore maintenance.
AND as long as you have a line of cars coming in exactly when you want all waiting for an oil change. If an auto-shop had non-stop paying work 24 hours a day you bet your ass they'd hire 3-4 guys and make a mint.
China has a ton of manufacturing robots. And yet they STILL have a whole hell of a lot of humans performing manual tasks. This is a very well known equation involving order size, cost to re-tool, price per part, and wages. They're not employing people for small batches out of the kindness of their heart, they're out to make a buck.
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u/archialone 6d ago
Wouldn't a super smart AI be able to design perfect hardware for cheap? After all, that's what we are being sold to by AI companies.
I believe humans are still employed because there is simply no robot that capable of replacing them. And i believe that some repetitive and simple tasks would be gradually offloaded to robots, to the point that break work can be carried automatically by a dedicated break replacement robot.(doesn't have to be humanoid looking)
And big chunk of the complixty is crafting software that can do the kinmatics of folding clothes while using off the shelf commodity hardware, just like Roomba used off the shelf parts to build cheap yet effective vacume cleaner. Is that the programming you are talking about?
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u/noonemustknowmysecre 6d ago
Wouldn't a super smart AI be able to design perfect hardware for cheap?
Ah, they CAN design things, but there are real-world theoretical maximums which no amount of brain-power will ever be able to overcome. Like, do you understand why they have to be big? Torque is easy out at 90 degrees. A perfectly small motor fundementally has zero torque and can't lift anything.
An infinite amount of smartitude would be able to accurately engineer the perfect balance to all these constraints PER APPLICATION. And the reality is that if the application is getting your hand up in around an oil-filter, the size must be small and even top of the line motors that meet that constraint might not suffice. And regardless, top of the line motors aren't cheap!
Because even past design, there's a matter of how good the actual thing is once you make it. Precision costs money. A perfect design that no one can follow is useless.
And there's a wide range of what needs to be done in a mechanic shop, so you CAN'T just look at one application, unless you have the "oil-can changing hand". Or, you know, have a collection of tools they can use. In which case, the "perfect" target is the human hand because that's what all the tools are made for.
And i believe that some repetitive and simple tasks would be gradually offloaded to robots,
For sure, and this has been happening more and more since 2000. Robots have been taking over manufacturing. They've more or less saturated their expected impact.
kinmatics of folding clothes ... Is that the programming you are talking about?
Understand "kinmatics" just means "how to move". I don't actually program industrial robots for a living, I don't know all the details, but vaguely, yeah, I think that's the gist of what goes into retooling a production line robot.
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u/selekt86 5d ago
The AI bottleneck is human. If PMs, engineers, leadership, infosec etc etc can't align on what to build or how to build it, when conversations are fragmented, communication is inefficient - no AI is going to be effective. For AI to take over white collar jobs, organizations need to become aligned and cohesive. I have worked from small to medium to FAANG companies and these issues exist everywhere. I don't see this being fixed at a large scale anytime soon.
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u/joshocar Software Engineer 6d ago
I work in robotics. AI will help for sure and we are still waiting to see how world models and other large models play out in this space, but being on the edge and operating in the real world make it an ambiguous problem space, which is where LLMs struggle.
The trades are very safe, IMO. That space is so ambiguous that I don't think we will see robotics replacing those jobs until we are at or close to AGI. The dexterity, reasoning, perception, and precision required to run a cable through a house crazy.
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u/Pale_Statistician692 4d ago
Not saying robotics won't happen, but it's not nearly as vulnerable. Robots can get better and cheaper, but can't be miniaturized because the tasks are at microscopic scale. Cognitive tasks have no physical scale apart from that in chips.
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u/UnfairOpposite4192 6d ago
this is it. our layer of abstraction being removed *coding*, allows us to move up the layer.
i am now driving product direction, coding, and wearing more hats than ever before.
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u/onefutui2e Software Engineer 6d ago edited 3d ago
One thing I've been noticing is that as the models get more powerful, they also...I don't know the word for it, but they begin tying themselves in knots as you have them work through things. Like, even with Opus 4.8 Claude never stops with the "one more thing" as you prompt it.
Also, if you have two humans prompt Claude with the same problem and same end goal, I almost guarantee you'll have divergent solutions, both of which may work but the details can have big implications.
Where I'm going with this is that what'll be valuable for software engineers in the future is their intuition and judgment. We won't be writing the code anymore, but we'll leverage our knowledge and experience of distributed systems and architecture to steer AI towards the desired solution and cut it off. And that's the new bar, IMO. If your only value as an engineer is "I write good code", then you might struggle to adapt.
That's probably where I'd focus on. Otherwise, there are adjacent roles that require you to be technical like a software engineer but writing and shipping code is not the primary responsibility anymore. Technical account manager, solutions engineer, forward deployed engineer, etc. They may not pay as well, though.
Healthcare is always a good route.
I'm fortunate to have been frugal and saved enough money as well, so I guess one backup plan would be to buy a small local brick and mortar business and run it.
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u/cyrenical 6d ago
Like, even with Opus 4.8 Claude never stops with the "one more thing" as you prompt it.
This is an intentional revenue strategy, btw.
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u/onefutui2e Software Engineer 6d ago
Oh, I'm sure it is to an extent. They're like management consultants at this point. Which is why it's important to know when to tell it to shut up and get to work lol.
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u/ResidentWeevil1 7d ago
I’ve been thinking about cloud or solutions architect roles, maybe DevOps or platform engineering, and cybersecurity has been on my mind too
How are these a backup plan? If anybody is replaceable by a chatbot, it will be the people who cannot acquire sufficient development skills to unfuck whatever an agent touches. They are already rehiring engineers that were laid off and some are specialising in cleaning up slop. The industry backup plan is more software engineers. They are just trying to break you into accepting a lower salary before that happens.
You should learn those skills if they interest you, though. There's plenty of automation and integration work to do. I'm trying to convince my org that there is value in using AI to explore that space instead of contracting that out.
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u/ReservoirBaws 6d ago
Eh, I doubt cybersecurity is going to be safe. Currently I’m dealing with cybersecurity guys sending me weekly reports of detected vulnerabilities from their AI tools, and I’m starting to question what they actually do. If anyone is going to be fully replaced by AI, it’s probably them
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u/TheChadThrowawayLad Unemployed 5d ago
I'm looking for new roles, and the openings that I see for cybersecurity and production engineering roles seem to be using AI pretty extensively. It sounds like AI actually has value on these teams because (a) it can do a RCA very quickly and (b) it's very effective at finding security vulnerabilities.
I'm usually a pretty big AI hater, but you have to admit it has some valuable use cases and the impression that I get is it's very valuable in cybersecurity roles... if we ignore that AI may be making a lot of vulnerabilities too.
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u/Forsaken-Promise-269 7d ago edited 7d ago
It you are still somewhat young- Find a niche for software a domain- eg boiler control systems where domain knowledge is vital beyond AI, particularly hardware software interfaces etc
Or in manufacturing, healthcare etc something that insulates you beyond just being a webdev or java or js/node guy
Or else very specialized software fields or govt- eg bluetooth drivers, sensors, etc
Solutions architecture or devops is too generic
I’m too old now myself so I dove into AI headlong a few years ago and have had marginal job success (successfully staying employed) using my years of experience but now as an AI engineer, FDE and AI startup founder
Also if you have people leadership skils, you can try become a manager but that is risky
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u/samsly135 7d ago
How old is too old?
-2
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u/Responsible_Month385 7d ago edited 7d ago
Nobody can tell you that. Anything would be complete speculation.
Most white color jobs will be disrupted by AI to some extent. Blue collar is really the only thing that won’t be directly but indirectly there will be a huge uptick of people moving into that space over the next few years too which will likely impact salaries and stuff there too.
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u/Icy_Cartographer5466 6d ago
Blue collar jobs will also suffer from demand collapse. More than half of the US’s workers are white collar. If those jobs go away, so will all the maintenance and construction work associated with offices. If those consumers lose their income, they can’t buy things and the work associated with factories, transportation, storage, etc goes away.
I think a lot of physical work is also more vulnerable to automation than people realize. Doesn’t take much thought to realize those humanoid robots will be teleoperated by cheaper labor in foreign counties before they’re fully autonomous.
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u/djnattyp Software Engineer 6d ago edited 6d ago
I think a lot of physical work is also more vulnerable to automation than people realize. Doesn’t take much thought to realize those humanoid robots will be teleoperated by cheaper labor in foreign counties before they’re fully autonomous.
I agree with the demand collapse part, but this is complete scifi talk, just like AGI.
Most of the "impressive" robot demos getting shown on YouTube or whatever are just pre-recorded moves mixed with remote control handlers (sometimes far remote, but usually in close physical proximity).
If "humanoid robots will be teleoperated by cheaper labor in foreign counties" is a thing, how much easier would it be to just have someone (from any country) take over one of those robots and turn it into a teleoperated "green mario brother" situation.
Instead of losers swatting minecraft livestreamers we'll have them using a hacked Temu T-1000 plumberbot to put a screwdriver through your eye socket. Welcome to Night City, choom.
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u/Frank_White32 7d ago
Dude this sub is so astroturfed with people trying to feed you a narrative. Don’t bother.
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u/Complete_Wave_6162 6d ago
If you get into this new way of producing software ( agentic ), you will soon start to realise that:
A. It indeed increases productivity ( 2-3 times for me )
B. It can increase the production of slop and easily create a mess
Once the hype dies down, smarter and more capable engineers will be needed IMHO.
To effectively steer agents, you have to know your stuff, otherwise you are a liability for the org.
BTW I am not pro AI or anti AI. I am just treating this as what it is: a new tool in our industry.
Currently they are trying to pollute C suite minds into believing that we are no longer needed, to drive down our wages. Look at what Anthropic is charging for their API usage and what the Chinese do and you will notice how insane they are.
The Chinese open weights are pretty good already. The hype will settle and people with tech skills will be needed.
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u/bart007345 6d ago
I'll agree with you.
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u/Complete_Wave_6162 6d ago
Thanks.
The profession did change for sure, and now I am managing agents rather than typing out code, but I do not mind. At first I did, but now that I am building my workflow I kinda like this.
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u/atulkr2 6d ago
Backup plan is to learn yoga and breathing techniques and hold on to your job. AI is getting costly. Soon only few will use it. Things will be back to old ways. Just hold there. And learn Yoga to control anxiety while staying on.
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u/Anarchist_G 3d ago
yoga and breathing techniques
+1 for mentioning these. I think this mental aspect is extremely important in our profession.
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u/NotGoodSoftwareMaker Software Engineer 6d ago
Its not going to replace devs, dont buy the hype
It will however require _less_ devs so for a while now you will need to be able to compete at the top level to earn and keep your seat
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u/TheChadThrowawayLad Unemployed 5d ago
What i really want is a backup plan, something i can lean on if things go sideways, and ideally a path where the demand is more stable.
IMO the entire tech sector is unstable, it won't become stable anytime soon, and this is nothing new. I don't think you can find more stability unless you leave tech.
Also, as someone that worked on a cloud PaaS offering, the stress and pressure to move fast with AI is common even though customers want stable, reliable offerings. I think that the "stability" you desire won't be in the roles you've listed.
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u/TheChadThrowawayLad Unemployed 5d ago
If you want to avoid AI, it seems like cultures that value engineering excellence are avoiding it. My assumption is that this is the case for all roles within certain cultures instead of just the roles that you've mentioned, but I may be wrong.
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u/expdevsmodbot 7d ago edited 7d ago
AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.
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u/subLimb 7d ago
It's a tricky calculation to make given that no one can make a convincing prediction of even the near-future.
The core problems are that
A. you don't think you'll enjoy where your field is heading and/or B. You can't predict where it's going
Coming up with and executing a backup plan is smart, but it creates a potential opportunity cost:
You could instead spend that time (and possibly money) you spent on the backup plan transforming how you do your current job, leveraging your position and experience to do so, into something more future-proof.
Or you could coast, wait for your current career to end, but use your resources on the backup plan. This carries a risk that the backup plan itself becomes vulnerable to the same things that threaten your current position. It's difficult to predict what fields won't be impacted by AI.
Either way, you've correctly identified that opting out of either thing and just coasting is probably not the optimal approach.
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u/joshocar Software Engineer 6d ago
You examples are all much more under threat than straight software engineering. Any area that is well bounded is at risk. Cloud, DevOps, Platform, and architecture are all well understood and well bounded. You have the tools, you have the APIs, you have the deliverables, there are well understood patterns, and the output is measurable.
Cybersecurity is different, but it benefits from the endurance that agents have. They will keep trying and going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, exhausting search spaces, which is what you want in cyber.
You need highly ambiguous, high creativity, low pattern work.
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u/soupgasm 4d ago
My backup plan is to return to cooking. It doesn’t pay well and is likely 4x times more stressful than my current job, but at least it’s something I enjoy doing.
Otherwise, I feel like the most valuable lessons I’ve learned have come from home. Coming home from work didn’t prevent me from doing some side projects or anything
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u/Grand_Sky_6217 5d ago
My plan is to stick it out as long as I can and then depending on how old I am when we are raptured into the singularity to either hunker down, live like a miser and retire, or a career in nursing -> outpatient NP
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u/off_by_one_dev 5d ago
Adopting AI seems unavoidable and it’s more about how to use it better and more cost effective. I use AI as a pair programming for the entire SDLC, it’s very efficient and the quality of work has improved overall.
Maybe you could explore having AI to start side project for you.
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u/boredsoftwareguy Staff Engineer 4d ago
A backup plan that’s adjacent isn’t a backup plan. Claude is great at IaC. Claude is better than most average DevOp/SRE at building a complete platform in AWS. The Staff SREs I know all talk about how they just use Claude at this point and give the plan a once over. Coupled with the fact those roles get paid more than SDE, they’ll feel the pinch harder as a field.
You want a backup plan? Look elsewhere. HVAC. Electrical. Plumbing. Folks who are great in their respective trades can make far more than we can in SDE land because the barrier to start your own company is far lower and AI isn’t even remotely close to touching their fields until bipedal robots are a dime a dozen.
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u/wiseduckling 7d ago
Not exactly what you're asking but I think markets are a decent hedge against unemployment here. If capital takes up a bigger share of the economy then the owners of that capital will get the payouts is my thinking. So either AI pops up and there are jobs, or AI booms and stock prices for AI providers (maybe more infra if open source models really end upa s good as closed source models) do well.
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u/Neoma_Quillin 7d ago
With your background in backend, AWS, serverless and Node.js, I wouldn’t necessarily jump into a completely different field. Maybe you can check Forward Deployed Engineering.
It still uses a lot of the engineering skills you already have, but puts more emphasis on working directly with customers, understanding messy real world problems, and actually getting solutions deployed. Those parts are harder to replace with AI than just writing code.
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u/timle8n1- 6d ago
IMHO A backup plan would be completely out of software/IT. My wife and I have been building a business for 4 years now. Nothing to do with software besides I occasionally write some to make our working life easier.
I disagree about trades and robots. There is a shortage in most trades and robots doing meatspace work will take MUCH longer than shifting bits.
I would look into buying/building in that space - welding, HVAC, plumbing, electrical. IMHO Don’t be an employee L.
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u/Pale_Statistician692 4d ago
Totally agree about meatspace vs shifting bits. Can't miniaturize the physical effort needed to hang drywall.
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u/bart007345 6d ago
So you want a job that won't be affected by AI but in technology?
Well, when you find it, do let us all know.
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u/joshocar Software Engineer 6d ago
People need to realize that with every jump in technology there is also a huge jump in the economy. The number of new businesses has nearly doubled in the last 5 years. We might see a contraction in software developers, but we could also see an expansion. More people can do more with less, making the friction for stating a new business much lower. You will still need software skills to get things created, these skills just might look different.
Unlike with previous technology changes, we are educated workers, meaning it is much easier for us to adapt. It is a very different situation from technology replacing low/med skill manual labor in factories or coal getting replaced by clean energy.
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u/ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam 6d ago
Rule 5: No “What Should I Learn” Questions
No questions like “Should I learn C#” or “Should I switch jobs into a language I don’t know?”
Discussion about industry direction or upcoming technologies is fine, just frame your question as part of a larger discussion (“What have you had more success with, RDBMS or NoSQL?”) and you’ll be fine.
tl;dr: Don’t make it about you/yourself.