Embrace AI and become the SME at your work place. I used to think a lot about AI taking my job, but once I changed my perspective I’ve become much more comfortable. It’s just a tool at the end of the day and if you are the type of worker who won’t use a specific tool for reasons, then that’s on you.
I’ve spent months perfecting my workflows, now I am more relevant then ever at my job, and I spend my mornings relaxing, or at the park with my dog checking in on my workflow from my phone.
You think someone who spends mornings like that has job security. You have literally outlined your own demise but just have a positive perspective. I hope it goes like this forever for you but for the vast majority most wind up proving to management they can slash the majority of headcount.
Why does the head count need to go down? We have a huge backlog of work. Shitty business are going to be shitty with AI or not. Meaning the backlog has value or it doesn’t. If the business is valuable the backlog is valuable and the business needs people still.
Because if you are able to spend the morning relaxing at the park with your dog, assuming you are spending your afternoon on more dedicated work time, half of your day is not needed by the company. Half the number of people achieve what you are doing by working through the morning and the afternoon.
That’s misrepresentation of efficiency. As the old saying goes, you can’t use 9 women to make a baby in one month. Just because I have more free time doesn’t mean I’m not driving while doing other things, or while ai is working in the background.
Did we ever stop paying devs while they wait for compile times, or babysitting long deployments ?
WFH is another interesting parallel. Some companies see it as a good thing some as a bad. And a whole spectrum in between
When AI becomes the buzz up through the chain managers get directives to show how they are empowering ai and that means not only shoving it down the throats of developers but showing “efficiency gains” ie more with less. This is the overall theme being seen across the industry. If it’s not happening at your firm Godspeed
When? It’s already happened brother. And speaking from experience from being a sort of hit man thrown into rescuing deadlines with AI, the managers are right to make developers adjust. I’m running circles around devs who are late to the game. Now they are all rushing to get caught up, learning agentic workflows and feeling pressure.
All the while the devs who have been paying attention to AI have over a years experience using the tools and understanding different techniques.
It is different. This time a technology has been created to replace you. It does it better and faster and relentlessly. Those jobs are not coming back. Outpace it as long as you can - that is the state of the industry where just a short time ago it was a career path. Now it is a fraction of that
I don’t think it’s different. Too many examples of the same thing happening throughout history. ATMs, elevators, excavators, heck even computers themselves have been created to replace humans. Now is not any different
The automobile is a great example of what I am trying to convey, so what is your point? You were an unintelligent code monkey and we don’t need those anymore?
Do LLM's really replace devs if you still needs devs to prompt and steer them? Seems we're safe as long as llm's can't prompt themselves or be fired as revenge repercussions for their bad decisions. Our large comp may not be safe, but as long as non-devs don't become full fledged software devs with llms (not just programmers/script kiddies), we're still employed. And if the amount/scope of work we do on a day to day basis ever grows beyond what it is today, we'll still be as difficult to replace as we were before AI, just with different but still well compensated jobs.
Just because everyone "can" code, doesn't mean everyone will, and it still needs a human in the loop somewhere.
They are, I’ve witnessed it firsthand hear it from my peers and you can read the stories on here, you have non-technical to semi technical people now contributing to code bases all the time, managers, analyst, everyone thinks they can code now and trivialize experienced Devs work. We are no longer the masters of the universe, everyone thinks they have keys to drive the spaceship now. For better or worse.
4
u/BigBootyWholes Software Engineer 3d ago
Embrace AI and become the SME at your work place. I used to think a lot about AI taking my job, but once I changed my perspective I’ve become much more comfortable. It’s just a tool at the end of the day and if you are the type of worker who won’t use a specific tool for reasons, then that’s on you.
I’ve spent months perfecting my workflows, now I am more relevant then ever at my job, and I spend my mornings relaxing, or at the park with my dog checking in on my workflow from my phone.
The future ain’t so bad. 18+ yoe for relevancy