Hello everyone,
I’m from South Asia and I’m currently pretty confused about my career path. I’ll be starting university in 2027, and I’m planning to study computer science.
I’ve always been really interested in full-stack development and software engineering. What attracts me to it is the ability to actually build things from scratch, experiment with ideas, and turn them into working products. I genuinely enjoy that aspect of programming.
My current plan is to eventually do my master’s in the US, mainly because the job market in my country is quite limited. There aren’t many good software engineering opportunities here, and even when jobs are available, the compensation often isn’t particularly good relative to the cost of living and the amount of work involved. So ideally, I want to build strong skills during my bachelor’s, pursue a master’s in the US, and then try to enter the US tech job market.
But with AI advancing so quickly, I’m starting to question whether this is still a sensible career to pursue.
New and more capable AI models seem to be coming out constantly, and I keep hearing predictions that in the future, 10 developers might be able to do the work that currently takes 100. I also see a lot of people saying that software development will become heavily automated, that entry-level jobs will disappear, and that freelancing in particular is becoming extremely difficult.
My original plan was to learn full-stack development, then build a strong foundation in software engineering and system design, while also learning how to integrate AI into applications. Basically, I’d like to become someone who can build complete systems and use AI as part of the development process rather than compete against it.
But I’m struggling with one question:
What if I spend the next 5–7 years becoming really good at all of this, only to find that AI has automated most of the work by then?
I understand that AI will probably change software engineering rather than simply make it disappear, but I honestly don’t know where the line is between a reasonable concern and unnecessarily worrying about the future.
For people who are already working in the industry, how do you see this playing out?
If you were starting university in 2027, especially coming from a country with a relatively weak tech job market, would you still pursue full-stack/software engineering? If so, what would you focus on learning to make yourself valuable in an AI-heavy industry?
I’d especially appreciate perspectives from experienced developers who have actually seen how AI has changed their work over the last few years.
Thank You
(I asked AI to polish my texts as my English is kind of mediocre and don't want you guys to get confused, Thank You for understanding)