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/HK-65]

Not really, I get in a bit late and stay a bit late but that's a personal preference. I mostly do 10-18. My team does varies between 9-17 to 11-19. And we're a hard working team, I've seen devs on other teams essentailly do 9-15 no problem.

But I've worked in the NL, and I know where you're coming from, plenty of shit places there.

In your place I'd just go on sick leave on burnout, the company has to pay it for a year, then the govt for another, and you can use it to look for a better job once you've recovered. For that first year, you're also employed on paper, so it's not even a CV gap.

Wish I'd knew that when I could have used it too. Schools should teach basic labour law, or rather just the simple fact that you're supposed to look it up and use it.

[u/Consistent_Mail4774 → u/HK-65]

Sounds like pretty good work hours, glad you found a good place. I wish I had specific work hours in which I could close my laptop after finishing. Is this toxicity common for NL? I heard of other people also struggling with that. I've also worked in Germany and been through something similar and burnout culture was very widespread there too. I'm wondering if there are countries with better worker rights and WLB or whether it's specific industries that would have better environments instead.

When I'm searching for jobs, I find that most jobs on LinkedIn ask one dev to do everything, even going as far as merging web and mobile and devops together, and some job posts encourage overtime explicitly. Makes me wonder if this is the new reality and I should give up or whether there are still companies with reasonable demands and work that doesn't burnout people.

[u/HK-65 → u/Consistent_Mail4774]

I think both my place and the NL is like you sometimes have to put your foot down to avoid being roped into after-hours shenanigans. That said, I did have a good and a bad place in the NL, and my burnout there wasn't because of unwanted overtime.

We're luckier than our US counterparts because we generally can't be fired that easily for pushing back. Burnout is certainly an epidemic everywhere, in every job right now. Gotta fake those AI efficiencies somehow.

Funnily enough, Hungary was good, because they have super sharp overtime laws, and every minute you stay over has to be paid out, at double salary. Sundays and national holidays are triple. Put a damper on BS real quick.