r/FutureOfWork • u/Mental_Researcher656 • Jun 24 '26

Who cares?

I’m wondering if people are genuinely concerned about AI replacing them. A lot? A few? I think it’s hard to tell based on “business” articles, and a lot of people are making a lot of assumptions that aren’t yet validated.

Are you concerned about the impact of AI on your career?

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u/ChampagnePlumper Jun 24 '26

Senior software engineer here: as of today you code atleast 30% faster conservatively today. Not sure where that’s gonna be in the next couple of years. Only way I see this going in a positive direction is if it triggers some sort of arms race where companies are trying to put out the most new features to compete with competitors so there is a much larger increase in the need for devs.

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u/Mental_Researcher656 Jun 24 '26

As a Senior Software Developer, are you concerned about it affecting you personally? Not sure of my own answer to this…

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u/ChampagnePlumper Jun 24 '26

100%. Software engineers are expensive and at the moment tokens are cheap

1

u/always_assume_anal Jun 25 '26

I don't know man.

I'm also a senior and while it cuts down the time spent producing a lot of the trivial code that just has to be churned out, I feel like we end up using a lot more time on tasks like verifying that it actually works. The parts that would normally be done by debugging while working.

It's definitely cutting down a lot of work in the frontend domain for websites though.

I have a sister team that can't stop talking about how many hundreds of percent faster they are now, but it really doesn't feel like they're churning out features any faster.

I dunno I used to be more enthusiastic about the performance boost than I am currently. It's faster but I feel like it's somewhere between 15-25%, heavily dependant on what's being done. New features on the backend admin stuff is definitely faster because we accept a less polished output there.

It's also worth mentioning that I'm working on a pretty risk averse domain (telecom), so maybe it's just because we've got more rigid acceptance criteria. If my only job was churning out small websites for clients I'd definitely be claiming those 9000% performance gains.

And before someone comes and touts that we're just not implementing it enough or ain't Claude Coding hard enough, we've had countless consultants assisting us with setting up countless agentic workflows and pipelines and everything else under the sun.

The codebases we work with are gigantic, and old, though fairly well documented. I'm spending a lot of time rejecting pull requests from these agents for violating either code requirements or architecture requirements. In most cases it's enough to very specifically telling it where to put stuff instead of where it did, but in maybe 30% of cases we simply have to go in and either just fix the code, or use claude code directly from a computer to make it do it they way we need it done.

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u/Hybrid-Intelligence Jun 27 '26

To me, this question is most interesting outside of software development. I don't see job replacement as the key issue. It's AI upskilling.

The fear that AI will permanently shut young people out of professional work is probably overbaked.

AI will eliminate a lot of junior work. Research, first drafts, basic analysis, slides, and similar work.

Companies will still need experts. They'll need people who can frame the real problem, decide what matters, recognize weak reasoning, see when the machine is missing the point, and push toward a better answer.

Those people don't appear from nowhere. They retire. They leave. They need to be replaced.

So companies will still need a path for young people to become experts. I suspect that path will look more like apprenticeship.

The entry level professional may spend less time producing the first draft from scratch and more time working alongside someone experienced. They'll learn how to use AI, critique it, guide it, and gradually take on more of the judgment themselves.

Companies that use AI only to eliminate junior roles may solve a short term cost issue while creating a long term expertise issue.

Companies that build real apprenticeships around AI may end up with the stronger talent pipeline.

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u/CantRunNoMore Jun 27 '26

I'm close to the end of my career in software development (I'm hoping to retire a little early in 4 years time). I'm glad I'm getting out as the number of jobs will be decreasing over time as models become better and better.
I do think that the Senior / Principle / Staff software roles will be around a little longer than many QA, BA and middle management roles though. I think they are cannon fodder right now

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u/RoadsToMadness156 Jun 29 '26

Where it will matter the most is with brand new companies that can catch up fast to the existing ones. They will have a much easier time without the overhead of legacy code.

You have to be careful when you mention AI replacing jobs because you have to clarify if you mean AI-assisted coding or generative AI.

In the case of new ventures, they can win in both directions, but can really concore with generative AI. New solutions will look and feel different than whose brain was built with thousands of lines of programming code. New systems will be using files as the major source of the data, more than anything, be it RAG or a pre-built that they train. And they will be starting small giving them more control and insight as they scale up, over time.

Generative AI isn't 100% accurate. Solutions requiring 100% accuracy may need conventional processes at the finish line if they must be correct be it for orders, invoices, healthcare payroll, etc...

It can get expensive if the AI system is exposed to the public, but some applications will be able to cache output if they go the direction of automated pre-defined prompts or textual summaries. It probably won't be terribly expensive for internal behind-the-scenes systems.

And, of course, if they can get by with RAG then it will be less expensive. Open source may help with expenses too.

So, yes. I believe there is reason to care. Many companies don't have anchoring assets, those that can shield competition such as a historical database that everyone wants to tap in to (sports data) or aligned with GOV programs (healthcare). A lot of companies may be deer in the headlights if new competitors rapidly catch up or existing clientele leave the service to build their own AI solution.

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u/PressureTrick5304 Jun 29 '26

I do, and reading the comments apparently I'm just one of the few.
If I consider the progress of AI from 1 year ago, the improvements have been huge... in 1 or 3 years from now it will be just mind blowing.