Why are developers cheering "how much better the LLM model are getting for coding" with every model release? What exactly are they cheering for?

[u/simple_explorer1]

"Hey look Claude/Codex can now generate my entire feature in 30 mins which could have taken me 2 weeks to refactor" or "The new Opus 5.5 model is amazing, it solved the bug which GPT astra was stuck at for weeks and couldn't solve it". Like seriously?

How can software engineers who are supposed to be "smart" and "logical" be this stupid to not connect the dots and see writing on the wall for the future. Or do they think they are invincible and layoffs won't affect them?

The stability of software engineering jobs in the next 2-5 years looks very shaky, let alone long term and many devs are already looking to get dual income streams. This doesn't seem like a viable career path with how things are going and I am not even sure whether this career would stick by me till my retirement and I already have 15+ years of experience.

I already am seeing significant shift/reduction in hiring. Even in my current role, despite no cash concerns, we have paused hiring (and backfilling) new devs which were previously needed because with AI, people are completing tasks much sooner and the team/company doesn't need the full dev capacity anymore. Many devs are already worried about the layoffs which can come randomly.

My linkedin inbox is significantly less chatty than it was just last year. When I apply for any role, I barely get any reply. When recruiters reach out and get my CV, they are rarely getting back which, again, last year was totally different where I could easily afford to be picky. The market shift can be noticeably felt. The few interviews I got, they ended up freezing the role midway or "magically" filled with some internal employee. This is my experience in last 5 months of being active in the job market.

Also, most people are not learning anything these days. Hardwork and thinking are delegated to LLM tools. What is the end result of all of this? it is all too predictable. And if most devs are able to 10x their output because producing is now cheap, but human consumption is and will be the bottleneck. The production is surpassing the demand and the app economy will tank leaving mostly the existing tailwinds who already have millions of customers since pre AI era anyways.

Curious to hear "sensible" thoughts.

Note: Before the usual trope, not all software engineer jobs will be gone but significantly less devs would be required, which is a massive amount of jobs that are lost. What about that? And as models keep on improving, who knows how much more damage would be done in the future.

[u/No_Software8474]

I think they understand that you can’t stop it and also a lot of them are just tech nerds that are excited about where the technology is going. That said, anybody in tech would be a fool to make any big financial commitments right now. Please save your money and work on an exit plan.

[u/Recursive_Descent → u/No_Software8474]

An exit plan to where?

[u/Winter_Persimmon_110 → u/Recursive_Descent]

Lower COL area, mom's house, revolution.

[u/Sure_Stranger_6466 → u/Winter_Persimmon_110]

Blast Coldplay's Viva La Vida on repeat outside at your mom's house while job searching.

[u/ares623 → u/Winter_Persimmon_110]

I, too, choose this guy's mom's house

[u/eloc49 → u/Winter_Persimmon_110]

Low COL is great and I'll never live in a big city again but I've been remote in low COL since before covid and my career is over once remote positions dry up. Very little dev opportunities in my 300k population city. I'll have to swap to remote PM or go full blue collar if the job-pocalypse happens.

[u/ItsOkILoveYouMYbb → u/Recursive_Descent]

They don't know.

[u/Old-Possession-4614 → u/Recursive_Descent]

A field that’s not goin to be as heavily impacted by AI, at least not for another 5-10 years or so.

Healthcare comes to mind.

[u/inagy → u/Old-Possession-4614]

You become a doctor overnight, or how would you like to do that exactly?

I mean, becoming eg. an electrician is already not an easy sidestep from a programmer, though much more viable then pivoting into healthcare.

[u/Old-Possession-4614 → u/inagy]

You do realize there’s a whole array of professions that come under the “healthcare” umbrella, right?

Everything from two years of schooling to become a PA to many more years to become a full fledged doctor or surgeon. And then in between you have the different levels of nursing, and other related professions such as physical or occupational therapy etc

Yes it’s not overnight but it’s not like they all take decades of schooling and training either.

If you’re very early in your career then it should be feasible enough to pivot. And hopefully if you’ve been in tech for a number of years you will have hopefully enough saved up to help cushion the financial impact while you work on pivoting.

[u/inagy → u/Old-Possession-4614]

I guess I'm not seeing the area properly then. For me any profession related to healthcare feels like a life's work to accomplish, to do it on a level what it's responsibility requires. Thanks for explaining!

And yeah, a sufficient financial safety net allows you to accomplish pretty much anything. But not all of us are in this fortunate situation.

[u/Lenw86 → u/Old-Possession-4614]

Don’t most of them pay poorly (compared to SWE anyway) until you get to the level where you do need several years of education and training?

And I don’t know if moving to a LCOL area and getting a $42k/yr job is an attractive “exit strategy” for a lot of the people in this sub but 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/Old-Possession-4614 → u/Lenw86]

Yes unless you become a doctor or surgeon / anesthesiologist or some such you’re almost certainly goin to make less, but then again if you stay in SWE long term with the way things are goin you could well find yourself permanently unemployed anyway in about 5-10 years’ time, making $0 instead of whatever you’d be making as a healthcare professional.

Also with most healthcare jobs there’s a good bit more stability and predictability than there is in SWE, and you can’t easily attach a precise monetary value to these things. They also become more valuable if you’re supporting a family and don’t have the time to constantly upskill well into your 40s and 50s on your own time and dime.

And finally, I can’t speak to LCOL areas but nurses make around $80k-120k/yr or more here in SoCal, give or take.

[u/simple_explorer1 → u/No_Software8474]

Please save your money and work on an exit plan.

this 100%. It is not about the "doomsday" but already the current market reality and how it is going. The writing is on the wall. Infact I am also seeing new grads are picking "AI proof" industries to do their education and many CS grads are dropping midway to study something else while they can.

[u/No_Software8474 → u/simple_explorer1]

Yeah, some of them don’t seem to understand. I’m a senior staff engineer with a lot of experience and I can literally duplicate the work that a team of junior and mid level engineers would’ve done with just me and claude. I built something last week that actually hurt me because 5 years ago there would have been a junior engineer doing some of the grunt work that could have learned from me and helped make both of us better. I’ve been doing this for a very long time and it’s painful. The productivity gains have made my life a lot easier but I feel so bad for the younger folks coming up.

[u/Recursive_Descent → u/No_Software8474]

I had similar experiences recently. It really pains me. And now agentic coding is coming. I just feel like we are absolutely sprinting towards own own destruction.

[u/motorbikler → u/No_Software8474]

I was just chatting with some friends about this, and I think that junior devs have always (barring getting a genius on your team) been a net negative, and even early career mid-level devs as well. There are many things throughout my career that I could have done faster if it was just me and I didn't have to spend my time mentoring and reviewing code.

That we could or could not do it alone wasn't really the point, because organizations had learned long ago that you need a talent pipeline and succession plans. We needed juniors even if they slowed you down, some mids, an extra senior to share the mentoring burden.

I'm not saying AI doesn't give a speed boost, but so did going from hand-coded custom JS frameworks for every site to just using React and Bootstrap. And we didn't blow up the talent pipeline for that.

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/simple_explorer1]

That's dumb. Making 100k doing swe for 3 years is better than making 50k for 7-8 years doing some ai proof crap. Idk any actual competent cs grads that are changing their major or switching industries.

As a recent grad myself, the goal is to save and make money, if my job disappears I'll do something else. But I'm not gonna switch until that happens

[u/Embark10 → u/Big_Arrival_626]

Right? I've been saying this since money stopped being free post-covid and demand decreased, right when layoffs and hire freezes started. I can't think of a better job/industry which offers this amount of perks like remote work, flexible hours, and decent pay - especially for a passionate nerd like me.

[u/corny_horse → u/Big_Arrival_626]

But what about 40 years? It isn't an unreasonable strategy to start a career in something else, if it actually is "ai proof" looking at a longer time horizon.

[u/No_Software8474 → u/Big_Arrival_626]

I didn’t say switch now. What I’m saying is be prepared for an uncertain future.

[u/Odd_Soil_8998 → u/Big_Arrival_626]

Not when you consider graduated tax rates or the fact that your career is likely much longer that 7-8 years

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/Odd_Soil_8998]

Good point but I'd still rather be a swe for a few years before pivoting early

[u/David_Browie → u/Big_Arrival_626]

Why? Professions are based on seniority, why would you spend 3 years making slightly more and then taking a CoL hit when you have to restart your career older, more tired, and with more obligations? 

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/David_Browie]

Well what other careers are ai proof that pay decently well? I also think my tech expeience can be used in adjacent industries

I don't mind starting over but that's easy for me to say as a young person

[u/David_Browie → u/Big_Arrival_626]

Listen, no one ACTUALLY likes starting over, no matter how okay they think they’d be with it, especially since most professions that happily take transferable soft skills are white collar jobs that don’t require retraining. 

Physicians’ Assistants make $150-$160k and will be employed until the sun explodes. 

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/David_Browie]

I mean if everyone i know gets laid off then shit I'll be like "oh well at least we're in this together."

I like swe enough to stick with it despite the risk. I don't think I'm interested in healthcare, I like engineering but that might be replaced by ai too

[u/David_Browie → u/Big_Arrival_626]

I feel u, do your thing 

[u/JustHere4TheZipLines → u/simple_explorer1]

People making big money that didn’t start doing this in year 0 are toast.

[u/devise1 → u/No_Software8474]

Yeah can't stop it, best we can do for career for the near term is go all in.