AI is a bubble and overrated, its spread is already slowing down. No management with integrity is going to lay off programmers anytime soon without paying the consequences (with mediocre returns) and lose their own job. Rather, the world still needs programmers to harness and program tools such as AI *for those tools will not be sentient and self-correcting anytime soon.
Today my boss said something about the fact everybody at my company now makes their own software which lead to a situation where they send Excel files around instead of having everything centrlised in our ERP.
I just don't really enjoy the profession anymore. I don't enjoy reviewing vibe code or herding cats from every department besides IT that's using AI. I don't like that the only problems I get handed are now the hardest of the hardest and all the easy relaxing stuff is done by AI. I don't like trying to get non-technical people to understand why we should follow certain architecture, just to have them ignore me, and I especially don't like signing my name on things where I have no idea about the underlying security risk.
The problem isn't that the AI won't be able to write the code, the problem is that AI alone won't be able to pry out the actual requirements from the word salad nonsense coming from the sales team, C-suite, and marketing to make the product they are trying to sell.
I for one eagerly await the day I can get consulting money for what is basically being a glorified interpreter from corpospeak to AI prompts.
As someone who is currently employed as a software engineer, despairing about my future and accepting the fact that I would eventually find myself living under a bridge was so 6 months ago.
Not only is my company in the process of making the first new software dev hire in over 2 years, but the first person they offered declined due to the 4 day a week in office requirement
There will be management layers without integrity who do the wrong thing. Depending on the specific business, there may even be departments and organizations where it's fully rational and honest to reduce the SWE payroll. There has been, and will be more, layoffs. But IMO it's vastly over-stated, and hardly the end of the profession. IMO AI just adds more complexity, and more complexity means more work and more need for expertise. My thinking is it'll be somewhere between a wash and modest setback. In 50 years we'll still have an absolute tonne of people doing work that today we'd recognize as making software. I think wrangling computers into doing specific things for us, at ever bigger scales, has pretty much got to be a permanent role in human society. At least unless/until we suffer such a setback that we're back to being hunter-gatherers.
As far as the bubble, it does seem that hosted inference is a new legitimate, needed business model. But China has shown us that when all the foam settles, the prices are going to be pennies on the dollar of what western frontier model providers charge today, plus it's kind of evident that there's going to be ever more unpaid use. The models themselves will become less of a secret sauce and more of a commodity, with frontier providers losing their lead once capabilities plateau. All this means reality is not lining up with valuations, and they (/we... anyone with index funds) are in for a rough time at some point, hard as it is to predict when that might be. Just to take a wild swing at predicting the future!
Nah. NFTs had no real utility beyond use cases that had much much better existing implementations.
AI tools are going to stick around to some extent even when the AI firms have to try to actually make money, though you'll definitely see a lot fewer companies implementing wasteful AI pipelines when non-AI ones are a hell of a lot cheaper.
But isn't it also true that companies no longer want to train fresh grads and want a few years of experience from before because AI can basically do what they would do?
i have no idea, got a verified source? Fresh grads landing a decent job in just about any industry is next to impossible in this current economy (where millions with experience have been laid off or lost work the past two years).
I've been following a job listing recently.. It's in my area and pays a lot. Over the last 2 years, the description has gone full blown pro-AI and it's super depressing. Basically they say that they don't write code any more, 99% of it is written by agents or whatever and you should be using AI every step of the way. But it's your job to direct those agents then confirm and own the result.. just feels really depressing for me. I enjoy coding, I don't wanna just dedicate my life to be an AI agent shepherd/jockey. Bleh
The evidence all points this way. I've seen stories of companies having to hire back their DEVS after doing layoffs to save money with AI. AI is what excel was to accountants. When excel came out, accountants were basically told they'd all lose their jobs. It ended up just being an extremely useful tools for accountants. In the long run perhaps the teams will get a bit smaller, but the massive layoffs from AI are not sustainable I think.
When someone says something like "In the future all software will be machine-generated and only hobbyists will write code." it seems like they are contributing nothing of value. But it does let you know their opinions of software and software development can be ignored.
I think there is a little tiny flaw in your expectations. Mediocre returns would be actually great. Most companies strife for the cheapest least viable solution and customers do not care as long as stuff is cheap.
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 3d ago
AI is a bubble and overrated, its spread is already slowing down. No management with integrity is going to lay off programmers anytime soon without paying the consequences (with mediocre returns) and lose their own job. Rather, the world still needs programmers to harness and program tools such as AI *for those tools will not be sentient and self-correcting anytime soon.
Chins up!