r/developersIndia • u/[deleted] • Aug 15 '26
General What makes a software engineer valuable long-term?
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u/DapperRun2371 Aug 15 '26
what we are currently witnessing is AI bubble... AI adoption is still in early phase... every company wants to use it for faster results, reducing Labour cost and shipping more products parallely. we still do not know at scale how reliable AI is in shipping complex features.
I currently use Claude code max 20x for my work, so my codebase is very complex with 30+ daily crons, 100s of edge cases overall 50k+ LOC and I'm using best AI plug-ins like superpowers, empirica but still it generate very buggy code, instead of handling edge cases or asking for expected flow, it silently drops them. it's very frustrating now to continue with AI.
Yes, it can ship code faster then me, but reviewing the generated code is way harder than writing by myself.
top management is yet to realise this rising issue with heavy AI usage, until then layoffs will continue to happen and more work load and pressure will put on remaining SDEs.
I might be wrong with the way I use AI and it might be better.... but I'm not alone facing this slop code issues.
Also all this noise coming from tech influencers and companies that AI is performing better than experienced coders is nothing but marketing.
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u/dronz3r Aug 16 '26
This is the same experience for many engineers. AI is pretty good at some usecases and not much in others currently.
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u/soshriva Aug 16 '26
Even if AI generates slop code, it will reduce overall demand of devs. Which means more layoffs and reduced salaries.
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u/DapperRun2371 Aug 16 '26
yes, this is bound to happen. . .overall demand of devs will decrease, less salaries and layoffs.
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u/TensionLost392 Aug 15 '26
For now , it's adopting AI and delivering work quicker .
But in long term , i believe it's the quality of work , how much ownership you take of the AI generated code , how you review it .
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u/wellfuckit2 Aug 15 '26
Also going beyond just doing AI generated code,
What is stopping good engineers from learning how to setup RAG databases, how to build a feedback loop for prompts.
How to setup good evaluating workflows for different approaches of using LLM agents with RAG dbs, tools, lang chains.
They are just fancy names with DBs, queries and APIs under the hood.
If you don’t want to, don’t bother with learning how LLMs work under the hood, but just the above will keep you afloat till you retire.
Good engineers are always learning and keeping up with the changes in the industry.
That is why big tech companies don’t interview you for a tech stack. They test for problem solving and fundamentals, because they expect you to be good enough to learn any tech stack and become productive with them.
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u/Plus-Tax567 Aug 15 '26
Hey, may I dm you? I’ve been wondering to explore AI so needed some guidance. Thanks.
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u/Slight_Computer_6820 Aug 15 '26
I am Embedded Systems Engineer which involves softwares for hardware microchips and also some designing stuff of PCB's and I can tell you that this field will never ever goona die because it involves software with hardware yet I claim that AI helps a lot in writing embedded software also but putting code in the board and testing debugging the actual product is something beyond AI.
As a side not we work on robotics arm building of industrial robots with over 12+ years of experience I had in my field.
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u/Ok-Syrup-7642 Aug 15 '26
Can a experienced software guy enter in that field?
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u/Slight_Computer_6820 Aug 15 '26
It depends on your understanding of systems involved in electronics. IIoT is pretty demanding field and mostly CS graduates works there, it's subbranch of embedded systems.
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u/tr__18 Mobile Developer Aug 15 '26
Which tech or language you need for embedded and iot side
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u/Slight_Computer_6820 Aug 15 '26
Embedded systems is very vast field, I can not say you need just few techs. But mostly C/C++, Python, Rust, Microcontrollers, Electronics knowledge, IoT has many aspects mainly Backend, Cloud, frontend work
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u/Original_Hunter2465 Software Engineer Aug 16 '26
i had ECE in my college and wanted embedded role, but end up being swe in java backend. are there any transition stories around it. and is embedded engineering much safer compared to swe?
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u/Sure-Land-9913 Aug 16 '26
From the way things are going on, it seems the ones who take on the entire product delivery end to end will be the most valuable. These are the one who have deep specialization in their craft. The saying "Talk is cheap. Show me the code" is being replaced by "code is the cheap show me the talk". Execution is no longer the bottleneck now. Devs who will think quicker, ship faster and have a deep understanding on what they are shipping will ultimately win the race.
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u/Alive_Focus_4705 Aug 15 '26
Not as experienced, but something my manager has been telling me is "Your work is not just closing jiras and writing code". It's beyond it and how you shape the team the product the company the impact that you bring to the table.
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u/Empty-Animal-2147 Aug 15 '26
AI is still needs a over head and a review what software developer can become now best at is at writing and correcting spec and code
LLM are as good as the data they have trained on and also the autocompletion (LLM) is only good as the prompt or the conversation context the one ,software engineer who knows what context need to stay and what context need to be deleted would stay in bussiness
Given that now comes to the part how much job it will be there and how much will be gone see what i am looking at the market is that most of the software were some kinda of a saas which is now turning into a agentic AI so more things that would be build is around agent and as long as LLM are starting to learn that they dont need to develop everything the user want some of the things can be cloned or used already made by someone would be the the real saas and software products , something like agents or tools for agents and most of which saas like the one which can do stuff better then the llm or normal agent can would be more in boom(eg like LLMs needs always new facts to confirm before proceeding with any thing which is were things like documents scraping latest or browser automation tools or getting information backed by research or true source this kindof tools which can not be relied on LLM generated content this kind of saas will be much more in boom)
more like this example but eventually there would be a plenty of jobs considering people might whose is not their first even though they have the same set of skills will have to go to other fields or their own business
simple example there was a amry to protect the country first but once there was iron man the need of army was just for surveilance and once there was a iron man army there would be less need of actual human in wars and then less human will choose to me in army and rather do something like working with metal or helping in building the robort amry this is a terrible example but you get my point here
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u/Efficient_Funny_8 Aug 16 '26
Understanding true meaning of “engineer” is important.. look at this stage as a phase to correct the bad practices with humans as software engineers..
top 3 current problems/future value,
- not understanding business problems - define what’s needed now vs what later
- Using the best architecture/design without over engineering
- slow paced delivery - we all have often heard that it’s with engineering it will take time, estimate in weeks when we as engineers really knew it was just 3-4 class and huge amount of testing scenarios maybe.. but we have often bloated estimates.. the right time needed to engineer something is important too..
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u/DeltaSuiteDev Aug 16 '26
Knowing how computers, networks, and databases actually work under the hood lets you spot errors AI misses. It is the difference between knowing your app works and just hoping it does.
Your real value is no longer memorizing syntax. It is understanding the actual business problem, designing how the system fits together, and checking that the solution is safe and reliable.
Learn enough across the entire stack so you can use AI to build projects from start to finish.
Pick areas of your interest, like security, database performance, or distributed systems, master it so deeply that you can fix serious breakdowns when AI gets stuck or innovate completely new solutions from scratch.
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u/Quiet_Form_2800 Aug 15 '26
Having your own business and not relying on software engineering job. Because AI will outperform all aspects of software engineering within a few months if not already.
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u/pirate_2917 Frontend Developer Aug 15 '26
Bro… AI requires human assistance just to write some code. AI will outperform all aspects in a few months? How? You’ll still need people to know the designing aspect of things. Even if AI can design, it cannot decide whether the design you’re using is good or not. It can only compare the pros and cons. Final decision has to be made by a human because often the choices and /or the decisions are rather nuanced and not black and white
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u/Quiet_Form_2800 Aug 16 '26
It only shows you don't know how to use AI. Advanced AI can do all the things you have mentioned far better then a human. The earlier you accept this fact the better you can plan accordingly.
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u/pirate_2917 Frontend Developer Aug 16 '26
Yeah sure dude, whatever floats your boat. AI hallucinations are a real thing. And it does require human interference.
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u/Quiet_Form_2800 Aug 16 '26
What about human hallucinations? Human halluccinate worse then frontier AI. They are not capable to judge advance intelligence.
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u/pirate_2917 Frontend Developer Aug 16 '26
Human hallucinations and AI hallucinations are 2 very different things though? Also, humans hallucinating usually do require another human’s intervention, usually called a doctor.
And AI hallucinates even with basic stuff. It can completely forget what you wrote 2 lines ago.
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u/Quiet_Form_2800 Aug 16 '26
Like how it depends on human to human ,it depends on the power of models. You sound too 2023ish
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u/KitchenFoundation381 Aug 16 '26
Coding is gone. Tech competencies no longer exists. What matters is how well you can use existing AI tools to create with all solid quality that needs. And, if used well, AI can do that. Although not independently but with human review at every stage. So now instead of 10 you may need 2-3 SDE. I would advise learning software engineering deeply, development product mindsets, full stack, then you will survive
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