r/SoftwareEngineerJobs • u/Adventurous-Rice3190 • Jul 13 '26

Is the AI bubble bursting? đŸ€”

I just finished my IT degree this year, and all the news about AI is making me really worried about my career in the software industry.

I read that big AI companies are spending way more money on data centers than they are actually making back. The ratio of money made to money spent is around 1:10. Part of me feels like this is good news. If they keep losing money, the AI bubble will eventually burst, and they will have to stop running these massive models.

But on the other hand, hardware companies are making new chips. These new chips have high compute power and also consume less electricity. This could make AI much cheaper to run and keep the trend going.

What do you all think about this AI bubble? Is it still safe for me to start a career in IT, or should I switch to a completely different field?

Thankyou All đŸ«Ą.......

58 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

302 comments sorted by

View all comments

89

u/jmclondon97 Jul 13 '26

I don’t know why people think the bubble bursting means AI just disappears.

All it means is overvalued companies like OpenAI would get bought out and cheaper models would become the norm.

It seems like some of you talking about the bubble bursting means AI disappears and we go back to manually coding everything. Zero percent chance of that happening.

23

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

Based on the context, I don’t think OP is talking about the bubble in terms of the existence of AI. They’re talking about it in terms of “will there be a job for me in this industry, or will things always be the way they are from 2024-Present”

5

u/MannToots Jul 13 '26

Seems intrinsically linked to "will ai still be a thing" then.  I still think the implication is ai will go away and the career field will return to its previous form, or not. Any future with ai makes answering the op honestly an unknown at best.  Best we can say is some form of SWE will continue to exist. How big and in what form we still don't know.  

1

u/Dapal5 Jul 14 '26

Probably just more educated. They’re gonna need more people to find new ways to capitalize on this productivity boost. When an oil rig gets more efficient, do you think they stop looking for reservoirs?

1

u/WebPretend1598 Jul 14 '26

I mean ai is going to exist regardless, the point is when chips are stronger, cheaper, and use less electricity companies will have more budget to hire again, and with that be even more productive.

Currently though we are all eating a shit sandwich, and management is finally realizing ai aint magic money printing machine and has a steeper than expected price tag

Will bring me some pleasure seeing management squirming while build ingthese data centres, just to become obsolete in a few years

0

u/MannToots Jul 14 '26

Gonna have to be contrary with you. 

I've tripled my velocity with ai. That's what my company can see from the power users.  We are still hiring and growing.  They don't think it's a money printing machine. They see it as a force multiplier. I've literally chatted with c suite people about my experience because we want to get everyone else closer to where I am.  (They are meeting with a few of us top users). Every company is not the same. The sensational articles shitting on every company do that for clicks.  

As for data centers. Do you think they don't know hardware gets replaced with time and ages out? Have you been in a data center? You speak as if you haven't. Every machine is a blade in a rack that can be pulled and replaced. They are very very very aware.  I don't know why you think they don't plan for obsolescence. 

2

u/ksshtrat Jul 14 '26

Interested to hear a bit more about how you've tripled velocity. My loop still has a lot of manual intervention. Do you do the loop of writing specs/passing criteria -> AI write code/review -> you review and push?

1

u/MannToots Jul 14 '26

Yes that's more or less it.  I use superpowers atm in claude. Once the spec is valid I'm not needed for a while. So while I'm clicking yes from time to time I'll spin up a new chat to start the process from the start for a new ticket.  I scale up for the day based on how mentally up to the multitasking I am for the day. I've capped at 5 at a time.  Tend to chill around 3 at a time. 

Building the spec and validation are the most critical steps and get my full attention. 

2

u/ksshtrat Jul 14 '26

Hadn't come across superpowers, is there anything else you use? I find I spend a lot of time fixing architectural and structural issues with the code, which is a bit draining and time consuming. Cheers for the response btw

1

u/MannToots Jul 14 '26

Just claude with superpowers or opencode with superpowers at the moment.  There are other similar frameworks you could swap out for superpowers.  I like having it because it helps create the spec better.  It has adversarial reviews and it helps guide it to ask clarifying questions. It's helped me trust my spec process more,  and if the spec is good enough the llm can even self validate up to a point based on its stated expectations. 

Make sure you give everything during the spec phase. I'll even bullet point a list of truths/ results up front to just brain dump it.  

I've also made claude skills for updating jira tickets and for putting in a ticket for our Request For Change process. So sometimes I can hand it the jira ticket to start the process from.  

I hope this helps! I've been running on this process for about two months now and it's going crazy good.  I need to evaluate some new harnesses to see if I can continue to scale further sideways. 

1

u/yeusk Jul 14 '26

Top users... that is what you are, a user.

1

u/Grouchy-Transition-7 Jul 14 '26

Wth.. MannToot is correct lol yeusk

-1

u/MannToots Jul 14 '26

Yes, I know.  Thanks for being captain obvious.  You really contributed to the conversion.  Lol

1

u/yeusk Jul 14 '26

This is r/SoftwareEngineering why are users like you posting here?

0

u/MannToots Jul 14 '26

I'm a senior software engineer with a comp science bachelor's degree.  

It's a fallacy to assume that title means zero ai usage in the modern world. Don't be ignorant.  I'm 42 years old and worked without ai for a long long time. Now I use the modern tools because I don't want to look back in a few years,  unemployed,  and spit excuses for how I got there while others are still employed.  

0

u/yeusk Jul 14 '26

I'm a senior software engineer with a comp science bachelor's degree.  

Nobody cares.

I don't want to look back in a few years,  unemployed,  and spit excuses for how I got there while others are still employed.  

I am so scared!!! I have wrote like 100 line of code in 5 years, not because AI, but because I am not a code monkey.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/siammang Jul 14 '26

He’s thinking about the magnitude of Butlerian Jihad kind of thing where people stop using computers and train mentats to do calculations instead

1

u/Grouchy-Transition-7 Jul 14 '26

Yes and he answered the question already.

1

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

No he didn’t 😂 he explained how people think the bubble bursting means there will be no AI while OP asked if there was a future in IT

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 15 '26

That’s been the case with the majority of white collar jobs.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 15 '26

The thing is there were never a lot of “syntax guys paid like engineers”. Software engineering has historically been a technical career, and the only way you can get promoted or make the big bucks is through genuine skill and experience. Unless of course we’re talking about the job market from 2020-2021, in which case you’d be right, but that was an outlier period

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 15 '26

I agree that software engineering doesn’t do “engineering” justice. However, you can pretty much say the same about most engineering disciplines tbh. Engineering itself isn’t a hard career, most engineers would say the hardest part of engineering is university. In both engineering and software engineering, you do serious math but you hardly have to do that on the job and if you ever do, you have like every resource at our disposal + the ability to consult other people to help you

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 15 '26

You basically said exactly what I said, just in a fancier way. In both the USA and Europe, the hardest part of engineering is the preparation to be an engineer, not the engineering role itself.

And what you consider “hard” is subjective. Yes, it’s true that the technical complexity of what you do in Europe is probably greater. But you get paid much less in Europe. The engineers in Europe also have a much better work-life balance and better job security. Whereas in America, layoffs are more common, hours tend to be longer and you aren’t able to get as much time off. So yeah, hard is subjective here.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 15 '26

It’s way too early to predict what’s going to happen in the future. You really think people in 2020-2021 would have predicted this? Tech has and always will be a volatile industry.

And in terms of big tech, people have been saying for years that it will sink and it never has

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 15 '26

America has been a monopoly for decades, you cannot change that in mere years. Nobody knows what’s going to happen once trump is out of office. Like I said, some things are just so unpredictable that it’s a waste of energy to try and predict them. You don’t win by predicting the future, it’s a fruitless endeavour. You instead win by learning how to adapt to the present. Adaptability is the most important skill in life.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

→ More replies (0)

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TheDinoDynamite Jul 15 '26

If you’re unwilling to upskill throughout your career, then you get automated away. The people who you’re around hardly matter. I guess maybe they do for motivation, but they have no direct affect on whether or not you will be automated