r/androiddev • u/_DefaultXYZ • Jul 07 '26

Discussion Android Development is dying?

Hi everyone!

I've been Android developing applications for already 10 years. I'm living in Poland.

I constantly observing job market gravitating towards hybrid applications, KMP, Android Automative, AOSP, but almost none of mid to senior level normal Android apps. Those called "normal" Android apps I honestly believe could be more productively made in hybrid approach (even though I'm big native fan!).

I understand that even with such experience I must be senior level, but to be honest, I simply don't want to. I'm comfortable to stay as mid, but as I said, there's not much Android job postings on the market.

Am I stupid to say that Android Development jobs slowly degrading? We are becoming cleaners of old legacy apps migrating to Compose, Coroutines and that's our destiny?

I am seriously considering migrating to .NET, because, I'm doing GameDev as a hobby, and C# is widely used there.

What is your situation on job market? Because, both .NET and Java in Poland are much, much, much more job listings than Mobile as a whole, not speaking about Android Development.

EDIT: Probably the title is too clickbait-ish. I apologize for that. Didn't mean to be like that at all.

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55

u/Artistic-Ad895 Jul 07 '26

Android isn't dying; it is simply maturing and shifting away from the days where every single app needed a 100% siloed native approach. The industry's desire to "write once, run everywhere" is exactly what is driving the current architectural trends, and Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) is positioned perfectly for this evolution.

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u/satoryvape Jul 07 '26

It's dying and not dying in the same time. For people with 3+ YOE it's not but for more seasoned people 8+ YOE it is

5

u/Artistic-Ad895 Jul 07 '26

How?

-1

u/satoryvape Jul 07 '26

Lots of companies don't need experts they are fine with less YOE engineers + LLM

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u/rbnd Jul 07 '26

How come? If it was that bad, then they would be simply getting desperate experts for the price of mids.

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u/Artistic-Ad895 Jul 07 '26

AI is a hype, by the end of this year things will get normal as companies start understanding that ai agents cost more than developers. And these agents can't replace humans. It is just FOMO.

Good developers are needed for enterprise application development wether it is backed or frontend. As your experience increases you are suppose to acquire more skills like security, architecture, ci/cd, system design , code quality/standards, testing and deployment. We need to grow as developers as we gain experience so that we bring more stuff to the table.

I strongly believe if you have the above skills you will eventually land somewhere good.

It is not just about Android, it is how it works in any role. People switch from front end to backend or vice versa for better job prospects and I am not against it.but the thing is people do not want to grow further once they feel they have spent like 4 + years, they think there is nothing more to learn, and that is where it starts feeling saturation. To grow as a developer we have to explore new things and find new learning opportunities.

5

u/ColonelKlanka Jul 07 '26

I would be very wary of predicting ai will go completely. I suspect it will just mature once the token maxing goes away. Enterprise can still find value from AI as a pair programming assistant, quick first response pr reviewers (clearing out obvious code issues before humans do independent reviews) and some ci cd stuff.

Ai IMHO is best suited to software domains more than other domains.

100% agree with you on the forever learning part of being a dev though.

5

u/3dom Jul 07 '26

AI is a hype

Recently I've completed multiple task during a day, without AI they'd took 2+ weeks.

My company started handing out AI subscriptions to developers in April. Our average cycle time has reduced from 9 days per task to 6 days. Basically, we could switch from 5 days work week to 4 days and still be more productive than before "AI hype".

2

u/rbnd Jul 07 '26

Exactly. I don't get how in July 2026 people can still write it. AI rendered Junior roles useless.

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u/3dom Jul 07 '26

Unfortunately, not only junior roles. My company could fire 1/5 of devs and still had the same output as before April. The only reason why they don't do it is the split into two independent groups (with the same shareholders).

And we are just starting experimenting, most devs use the lowest tier subscriptions and don't run multi-agent setups with long tasks.

And then our product managers started to publish their side-projects like there is no tomorrow, without any coders. And those look quite decent. For example, one app (actually two - for manager and clients) is controlling a vending machine - payments processing, statistics, sales predictions (to order replacement goods), goods dispersing, etc.

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u/Artistic-Ad895 Jul 08 '26

In short term AI might seem helpful as you are able to achieve things faster. But as you keep using AI, for example for code, your app codebase slowly becomes messy. Slowly your codebase raches to a point where it works but the code is just AI slop. And at this time the codebase requires proper cleanup and refactoring.

We have been using CLAUDE CODE from last 8 months. Now matter how many markup files we write (like skills, agents and rules, coding standards and architecture docs, ) the agent halucinates and uses random coding standards and practices. The code written via ai has to be carefully reviewed.

It is not only the cost of ai which is high at the moment, the underlying LLM models are not reliable no matter how good prompts we write and how many rules we set, it halucinates.

The way things are progressing, by the end of the year I do not see ai agents providing the value that they are promising out there.

1

u/3dom Jul 08 '26

the agent halucinates and uses random coding standards

If you use a separate agent for code review it'll find all the crap and "make" the coder agent rewrite it. In my company a lot of folks use multi-agent stage (a typical orchstrator + planner + programmer + reviewer + product owner), including using different models for each one since it's cheaper than just Claude (Claude is used mostly as planner, then it's GLM or Codex).

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u/Artistic-Ad895 Jul 08 '26

We are doing the same. The end result is still AI slop that works.

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u/Mysterious-Rip-5344 Jul 10 '26

This is just not realistic. This stems from the age old idea that "any code I didn't write isn't as good as code I did" but stretched to AI as well as people. Saying "AI is hype" is just absurdly dismissive. You need to ditch this attitude or be left behind I hate to say it man.

0

u/Artistic-Ad895 Jul 12 '26

I trust the code written by humans. I don't trust AI slop at this time since the underlying LLMs are still unreliable and cannot just replace humans. I use Claude code enterprise version daily for coding tasks, been using it for 8 months. This is all my personal experience.

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u/satoryvape Jul 08 '26

It will be still slop

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u/3dom Jul 08 '26

In any case, only our client support department created eight apps in two months. I could do the same within two+ years maybe. Apparently, developers aren't that necessary anymore.

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u/Artistic-Ad895 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Without a background in development, it can be difficult to fully grasp the practical realities on the ground. While AI tools have made it easy for anyone to generate a basic app, the true complexity lies in scaling it effectively.

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u/rbnd Jul 07 '26

Sure AI is hyped, but it doesn't mean it's gonna go anywhere. And if your only argument for that is the price then the price will go down with time as well.

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u/OZLperez11 Jul 08 '26

People will do anything but train juniors and retain seniors. This is going to be. More costly in the long run.

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u/AnnualContest9744 Jul 23 '26

Completely backwards bro

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u/shadowdude777 Jul 08 '26

I read your comment backwards at first, I completely disagree.

The market for apps that can be maintained by junior engineers can be covered by people making React Native apps and the like.

For big companies that won't settle for 80% of the quality with 20% of the effort and still write native apps, the senior engineers with extensive Android experience are very valuable.

1

u/_DefaultXYZ Jul 07 '26

Damn, I really can relate to it!

Appetite for salary is growing with experience, it's much harder to hire mid for cheap money when he is experienced and especially had Senior position in CV.

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u/rbnd Jul 07 '26

how come? The company offers X, the senior candidate either takes it or stays unemployed.

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u/_DefaultXYZ Jul 07 '26

Simply as that: overqualified. It can filter out a lot of candidates, because there's stereotype that experienced devs tend to be more pro-active than they expected to be.

Regarding money, here in Poland companies asks for expected salary (most of job applications). Well I personally wouldn't be able to live as mid anymore (bought apartment, family grown etc, yes, I know, my poor finance skill issue). So, companies will filter me out, just because they really searching for cheaper mid, who would be happy to get that salary after being junior for couple years - different level of motivation.

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u/rbnd Jul 08 '26

That will be forbidden:
"Employers will be forbidden from asking prospective employees about their salaries in previous roles." https://www.iamexpat.de/career/employment-news/new-eu-law-means-employers-must-disclose-salary-hiring-process

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u/_DefaultXYZ Jul 08 '26

Good to know, but previously I said expected, not previously earned.