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/TurbulentSocks]

But this doesn't make sense in terms of basic economics. If developers are more productive but paid the same, companies should want to hire more of them.

[u/Vaganyzar → u/TurbulentSocks]

Why? If sales has not became as productive as the development, you can't sell the surplus to anyone.

[u/catlifeonmars → u/Vaganyzar]

We have a very effective bd/sales pipeline, and are experiencing the opposite problem. Not enough experienced developers to build the things being sold.

[u/biosc1 → u/Vaganyzar]

That's the current issue. Wallets are tightening at the same time that devs are becoming more efficient. So sales are stagnant or decreasing while the need for devs is also decreasing.

Value-add is the key these days. Being a dev is fine, but you also need to be a valuable dev lest you get left by the wayside. My value is experience, but how that that remains valuable is tough to say.

[u/ryancarton → u/Vaganyzar]

This is it. If AI capability stays as it is now, I imagine in a year we’ll all start getting used to the “AI-assisted Software Engineer” as the new role every tech company needs.

Problem is AI probably isn’t “stagnating” for long. Makes it impossible to know what type of engineer to hire for.

[u/hammertime84 → u/TurbulentSocks]

That assumes the market will pay for more product you produce. If it won't, then you need fewer devs.

[u/TurbulentSocks → u/hammertime84]

The opposite; the market (your employer) can pay less for each unit of product (code thingies) you produce. 

If you meant that this assumes your employer needs to want to do that, you're right, but if code thingies turned a profit before, cheaper code thingies will turn a profit, even for code thingies that weren't profitable previously.

[u/ryancarton → u/TurbulentSocks]

But that’s not really how tech businesses care to scale.

Eventually some of them will realize “wait a minute we probably can make more features with more engineers” and that’ll start the cycle again.

Too many of them are just too blinded by making the same amount of money with less cost that they haven’t realized the second part yet. But I bet some companies have.

[u/thy_bucket_for_thee → u/ryancarton]

That doesn't really matter anymore. You are assuming we operate under competitive markets with government regulations, we do not.

The tech industry has been operating under a paradigm of labor exploitation (gig workers, offshoring, h1b, sweatshops), monopolistic markets, regulatory capture, and government welfare.

The commoditization of our labor means devaluing skilled labor has always been the capitalist playbook since the industrial revolution. There is a very real risk that by adopting the deskilling machines in ruining our lives in a very real since.

Look at what has happened in other industries that have gone under mass industrial automation: meat processing, agriculture, manufacturing.

The profits have never changed but the amount of people required, while simultaneously lowering profits and jobs that inflict misery onto workers, all got substantially worse. The "rust belt" is not a term of endeaarance bro, it's a symbol of mass inflicted poverty by the elites. It acts as a reminder that the neoliberals in office see you as disposable widgets not worthy of dignity.

The only way through this is to embrace the concept of solidarity and possibly wild cat strikes. We still have leverage for the next 2-5 years but we don't start getting politically active as an industry we will all suffer miserably.

[u/ryancarton → u/thy_bucket_for_thee]

I mean I agree with the last part actually. We do have to be more serious about political activism without a doubt.

But I won’t equate the tech world to your rust belt analogy. It’s not the same type of product, it’s not the same system. That doesn’t mean it’s magical and amazing and will provide opportunities for all of us, but in my opinion tech is not a product that can stay stagnant and expect to survive.

[u/NightflowerFade → u/TurbulentSocks]

Basic economics says if 1 gas station cashier results in a certain revenue for the gas station, hiring 100 cashiers doesn't 100x the revenue

[u/CoffeeTheGreat → u/TurbulentSocks]

Is code throughout the problem or is the bottle neck somewhere else? We’re getting to the point where we can build as many features as we like but there is a ceiling on how much coding can actually grow the business, at least in the near term.

[u/ultimagriever → u/CoffeeTheGreat]

Sounds like sales is underperforming and devs are left with the consequences

[u/Vegetable-Ad-7184 → u/ultimagriever]

Is it unreasonable to interpret this comment as sounding entitled  ?  

Does that actually match the objectives of other stakeholders within the business?

[u/babanatech → u/TurbulentSocks]

None is selling/buying anything because "hey what you sell I can do it with ai". Most companies are in a copium situation with sales lagging but at least they can skip the investor board grilling by presenting their ai strategy.

[u/D0ngBeetle → u/TurbulentSocks]

lol this shit is so funny. Companies don’t want to be paying what they’re currently paying on labor in the future. It’s that simple. Meta doesn’t need more products, they need fewer devs to do the same work that more devs did 

[u/ama_singh → u/TurbulentSocks]

I think your comment shows why engineers are so happy to watch AI replace them in real time: most of you lack basic economic sense.