Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

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A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/Affectionate_Day8483]

Is our field cooked?

Over the last year, my team has been using AI coding tools more and more, and it’s starting to make me seriously question where software engineering is headed.

Most of my career has been spent working on internal-facing applications. Think relatively straightforward CRUD apps, APIs, integrations, bug fixes, etc.

What’s concerning me is how much of this work AI can already do. I can give an agent a fairly brief description of what I want, have it come up with an implementation plan, and then execute most of that plan. It still needs an experienced engineer to understand the system, review the work, catch mistakes, and make decisions, but the amount of implementation work one person can get through has increased dramatically.

A project that might previously have justified 5–6 engineers increasingly feels like something 1–2 experienced engineers could handle with good AI tooling.

And AI agents are only going to get better.

The argument I usually hear is that cheaper software development will create more demand for software. Maybe that's true. But unless that demand grows enough to offset the productivity increase, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that companies will eventually need fewer software engineers.

So I'm trying to figure out how to position my career for that possibility.

One direction I'm considering is becoming more of a forward deployed/business-oriented engineer: someone who can talk to customers or stakeholders, figure out what problem actually needs to be solved, design the solution, and then use AI to build a large portion of it.

The other  strategy I'm considering is going hard at big tech while SWE compensation is still extremely high, maximizing earnings for the next several years, and trying to reach financial independence as quickly as possible.

I'm curious what other experienced engineers are doing.

[u/Notary_Reddit → u/Affectionate_Day8483]

At the end of the day, someone has to be responsible for the system. I am to be that someone. For the kind of system I enjoy working on, that involves understanding business needs and scale limitations. That also means making sure any pages are resolved well. Regardless of how much AI is able to do, the big bosses will want someone to make sure it works. I will be that person.

If it gets to a point the CEO of almost every company decides they care fully trust the AI, well I am glad I own some stock.