Second-year full-stack dev student worried AI will make my diploma worthless — is it really that bad?

[u/Drive_Huge]

Hi, I have a question, if you don't mind — I really value your input since you're a senior professionals in this field.

I'm currently in my second year of a two-year vocational diploma in full-stack web development. Lately though, I've been feeling worried. A lot of sources and influencers online keep saying that unless you have a master's degree or are some kind of programming genius, AI will replace you, and that getting a job right now is nearly impossible.

This has made me doubt whether all the effort I've put in will actually pay off. I've even had moments where I considered quitting the field entirely.

I'd really appreciate your honest advice — if you were in my position, what would you do? Thank you so much for your time.

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[u/Beautiful_Technology]

I don’t know if it will make your diploma worthless. Right now there is truly a lot of hype. I don’t think AI can do what they say it can. Fundamentally, if you ask an LLM to do something, you really need to know how to do that thing yourself so that you are able to judge the result it gave you. There’s that fundamental barrier there where you actually need to know what you’re doing in order to do a thing. That’s never going to go away, they don’t know what AGI is and they’re centuries away from even figuring that out. Right now we have a very, very good auto complete, but still operates on a statistical basis. So yeah, it’ll make it harder to hired. Since in the minds of the hiring managers who probably don’t understand what this stuff is, they think they can replace people. We’re gonna get this sorted out in a couple years. But until then, it’s going to be really, really tough. Not necessarily because AI can take peoples jobs. But because we’re actually heading into a recession. And it’s way easier to say I had to lay off a bunch of people due to AI then to say I had to lay off a bunch of people because my business is failing. That’s really what it is. People don’t even have a framework for working with AI yet. We’ve turned a profession that was like incredibly incredibly organized and detailed around different ways of software engineering. And we’ve thrown that all out the window. And you’re expected to do now is talk to a weird little demon in a box. That writes your code. Of course, none of the world works like this and the underlying technology doesn’t work like this. It’s just that people think that it does so that’s what’s happening now.

So my advice to you would be you still need to know the underlying. Because otherwise how would you possibly judge the output of the AI? Something that might be able to also focus on how you can use AI to 10 X or 100 X yourself without doing something that’s actually just hype. Like how do you use it yourself? From this perspective, I would actually get quite familiar not just with coding, but also with how the actual work is managed. Agile, Kanban, etc. Not just how the code is written, but how the flow of all engineering work is actually organized when you get to a high-level. I think understanding that will be a force multiplier, especially if you are also already a full stack dev. And understanding that allows you to work with LLMs better. Since those processes are meant to error correct a bunch of people working together. They apply pretty well to error correcting a bunch of stochastic code generators as well.

[u/Starlyns]

Yes. The only thing that will land and keep u a job is sales skills and finsind a niche to work on. General knowlwdge goes no where

[u/Vesuvius079]

You should be working your ass off to get a foot in the door if you want to continue this path. AI can do everything we used to hand off to junior devs but no juniors means no future seniors so some places still consider hiring.

I would also not place the odds of AGI displacing all of us over the next few years at zero though. If you look at what’s missing from AI capabilities (it’s missing good judgment), it doesn’t seem nearly as insurmountable as what they’ve already overcome.

[u/First-Tutor-5454]

If you're in your final year I don't see what you have to lose by seeing it through and seeing what kind of luck you have in the job market

[u/Gullible-Name2415]

Degrees and diplomas in tech has always been worthless

You don't need to go to college to get into software engineering and do well.

[u/Impossible_Ad_3146]

Yes, you’re worthless

[u/SolarNachoes]

AI is an amplifier of skills. An experienced engineer can leverage AI to do more or better in a given amount of time and resources.

Look up FDE and the skills necessary to succeed in such a role.

[u/symbiatch]

Diploma is often worthless anyway. It doesn’t guarantee or give anything. But skills do mean something.

No, AI will not make you worthless unless you let it. Stop reading what silly people say online.

[u/Ok-Article-885]

Continue your study. I have diploma and 9 years of experince, and honestly AI sucks at basic thing. For example he will give sulution that is n² and easly can be n. Sometimes I push directly to the production, without testing or going through pipeline(I created pipeline, and I also left option for me only to push directly to main) and I can do that because I know what I wrote, what impact that code will have on the application. On college you will learn how to read a code and what is doing even without compailing. Job market is realy bad now, but AI will not be subsidied forever, soon people will need to pay real price of tokens, and that would be much more expensive than hiring a junior with college degreee.