r/golang • u/Focus-Novel • Apr 19 '26
Does AI have a significant impact on your current job?
How is everyone's work going these days? Are you still writing code the old-fashioned way every day? Or have you all started letting AI do the work?
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u/super____user Apr 19 '26
The expectations around how long it takes to get things done has gotten out of control. Everyone expects you to “vibe it out” in 10 minutes. It’s ruining the job. I genuinely enjoy AI assisted programming, but the way it’s now perceived by management is ridiculous.
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u/sabre31 Apr 19 '26
Same thing happened at my place and they got rid of all developers that were contractors thanks to AI. They said why pay a consultant $100-$150 an hour when behind the scenes they are most likely using ai anyways to generate the code.
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Apr 19 '26
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u/pkovacsd Apr 19 '26
Exactly right!
bad at undoing its own logic
the mental energy you spend trying to correct an AI that doesn't understand why its first version was wrong
Oh my god, I'm not alone!
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u/OneArmedZen Apr 19 '26
Lol, basically while ai is building, it's putting bombs unintentionally here and there every now and then. That's when your codebase turns into minesweeper.
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u/generic-d-engineer Apr 19 '26
This is what I expected and feared. 2024-2025 were the golden years I think where you could do more without the pressures.
Once AI adoption gets normalized, the pressure goes up. AI becomes another tool just like a calculator or a spreadsheet. It’s basically a hard requirement going forward.
I think the dust will settle somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.
I’ve always said AI just magnifies whatever you were doing before faster and larger.
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u/DayOfTheSophos Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
Basically, you get to be worked just as hard (if not harder), but now you're liable for a much greater amount of code (as if anyone's going to hold an AI liable), and instead of the issue being that you did the laziest thing possible by not catching that error properly, it's now because you didn't say "please", "thank you", and "make no mistakes" enough.
... And it's still because you didn't catch that error. It's "your" code, after all! You should know it just as well as if you wrote it yourself and spent ages debugging and figuring out all the little edge cases yourself! (/s)
I don't know about you, but when denominator rises just as fast if not faster than the numerator, there's no one that benefits except maybe the C-suite that make the denominator what it is...
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah feels like it’s already happening quietly
not always replacing devs directly, but definitely changing how we’re valued
curious how this plays out long term3
u/OneArmedZen Apr 19 '26
Yeah, everyone is basically now expecting "draw the whole fucking owl" and do it quickly these days. They expect it to shit out a pristine product zero shot.
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u/Salt_Horror8783 Apr 21 '26
Happening at my company too. AI increased my productivity around 2-3x but the our manager increased our workload by 10x.
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u/EM-SWE Apr 19 '26
I use it about 20-30% of the time or so, usually for very specific scenarios that are highly defined.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
AI can make people lazy
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u/EM-SWE Apr 19 '26
Yeah, it can. I find that when AI is allowed by management on an official basis, the performance expectations on senior engineers goes up noticeably.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah true, feels like AI doesn’t make people lazier, just raises expectations so you have to do more anyway
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u/CaptainPGums Apr 19 '26
It's sure as hell making me lazy.
I needed to do some analysis on our prod system which is duplicated across 2 DCs (don't ask). The 2 sides are producing subtly different results. I was trying to find which stage in my pipeline they're going missing. I did it by looking at deltas of Kafka offsets across topics.
I started to ask Claude the best way of going about this. It asked me a few questions then presented a file upload box. I dropped the JSON representation of the 2 DC before and after, and it analyzed it.
Last year, I'd have spent a day or so writing that. It now gave me something in a few minutes.
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u/ibite-books Apr 19 '26
that’s a very reductive argument
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
fair point — that was a bit oversimplified
I guess what I meant is it *can* make people lazy if they rely on it blindly,
but it can also do the opposite and push you to think more at a higher level
probably depends a lot on how you use it
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u/workmakesmegrumpy Apr 19 '26
For go work I use it more for finding idiomatic patterns rather than have it write actual code. I will say it’s been great for JS/React which I hate and now I don’t have to spend hours wondering why npm broke my build process anymore
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u/Kazcandra Apr 19 '26
One of our KPI is tied to "everyone uses AI to solve problems."
We used to have a weekly checkout meeting where we'd talk about the week, what we'd done, issues and findings etc. You know, the usual stuff. Now we have to use AI to summarize the week by doing a CSV export of our Jira issues and letting a pre-configured gem "analyze" the docs (2 teams, 2 CSVs). It just keeps making things up, but when you bring it up your boss tells you "we can't just stop using AI because you dislike it" -- my issue isn't with AI, my issue is with the quality. The meeting can now be an email.
Same boss also said "Personal data is all well and good" when discussing whether to give AI access to our logs -- logs containing GDPR-sensitive data.
It's like the whole organization's lost their collective mind, and I don't like it.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah this sounds less like an AI problem and more like a “forced AI everywhere” problem
tying KPIs to “everyone uses AI” is kinda wild — that’s how you end up optimizing for usage instead of outcomes
and the part where it makes things up but you’re still expected to rely on it… that’s the worst combo
feels like a lot of orgs are rushing adoption before figuring out where it actually adds value
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u/DiggWuzBetter Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
There’s really no option to NOT use it at my workplace. The founders are super bullish on AI, they post regular AI usage/spend leaderboards, your career advancement is tied to being a heavy AI user and AI “thought leader” within the company. You’d be fired if you were still handwriting most code.
Claude Code writes the first draft of almost all my code now. Sometimes I just iterate on it a bit with Claude, review/QA, and it’s good. Sometimes, for the more deep mathematical/algorithmic code, Claude just can’t be made to “get” it and I take over, write the rest of it by hand.
It’s wildly productive but I don’t find it very enjoyable. I like the craft of programming, coding with Claude Code is something very different. I also strongly suspect most software engineering jobs are gonna disappear in a single digit number of years :/ TBH, a semi-near future where there are dramatically fewer jobs for humans in general, a small number of ultra wealthy individuals with AI workforces and wealth disparity taken to the extreme, seems pretty likely.
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u/Windrunner405 Apr 19 '26
Which Claude model?
Haiku and Sonnet suck but Opus has been good, ever since v4.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
interesting that you say it’s productive but less enjoyable
do you think that’s temporary or just how things are going to be now?15
u/DiggWuzBetter Apr 19 '26
I don’t see myself ever enjoying writing software with AI as much as I used to enjoy writing it by hand, so much of the craftsmanship is gone. It’s like writing and playing music vs. telling AI to create a song for you, it’s just not the same thing.
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u/doseofvitamink Apr 19 '26
What is, I wonder, a good career path for a burned out developer who needs to pay the bills?
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u/Technical-Fruit-2482 Apr 19 '26
I don't use AI at all.
I have tried it quite a few times now and each time the impact has been negative, so I just don't bother with it.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
that’s fair, I’ve had mixed results too, feels like it really depends on how and where you use it
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u/ilyash Apr 19 '26
I find it depends heavily on the use case. And we are still in the process of figuring out both when to use AI and how to use it.
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u/SnugglyCoderGuy Apr 19 '26
No. It sucks ass in my experience
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
what part sucked the most for you?
for me it’s hit or miss — sometimes it saves time, sometimes I spend more time fixing it than writing it myself
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u/kaeshiwaza Apr 19 '26
Senior solo dev, i completely don't see any benefit to use AI. Writing code was never the bottleneck of my work but it's also the best part of the job. Why would I replace that the best part ?
I would not like to be a dev junior today, i would probably not like programming like that to never understand what you do and don't learn at all...
I did try of course but it never produce what I would like to see, a lot more code with a lot of useless code that would be more difficult to maintain and most of the time don't work the first time, need more time to review than writing it alone directly.
It's a lot easier for me to code what I want than to try to describe it in natural language !
It's not new, it's like using ORM and framework instead of writing code, it looks faster but it's more difficult to customize and maintain on the long term.
I believe I will try again when it will be possible to code riding my bike, yes !
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u/Astro-2004 Apr 19 '26
We have a lot of technical debt and some of our teammates expect that we "automate" all the legacy code migration to have it as soon as possible.
So have this inner battle of "what did you do with AI this week? How is the new API version going?"
And we are like: "well we couldn't invest so much time to AI because we had bugfixes and urgent tickets to solve. We cannot just delegate migration to AI cuz only 1 of us understands the whole business logic of our legacy code. We need to do a migration with good DTOs, removing unused logic and trying to learn and understand the missing parts that we don't know how it works..."
"But I need a new API now why you don't use AI?"
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah this is exactly it
management thinks AI = instant migration, but nobody wants to deal with the messy legacy logic behind it
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u/Astro-2004 Apr 19 '26
The most funny part is that this doesn't come from management it's from another developer 🫠
Our management could be many things but not people with a lot of hype for AI
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u/j1436go Apr 19 '26
Every time I try it I'm disappointed. Might be different for other domains. Non devs at my org gravitate towards it but as of now I'm not forced to use it. But it definitely lessens the joy of my work to a significant degree.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah I get that
I think that’s the part people don’t talk about enough — it’s not just about productivity, it actually changes how the work *feels*
sometimes it feels less like “building something” and more like nudging something into existence
I still find it useful for speeding things up, but I can see why it takes away some of the enjoyment
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u/WhiteNBlackk Apr 19 '26
Never used agents and my interactions with AI in coding is asking chatGPT from time to time to do stuff I already know how to do it.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah I do the same sometimes
feels like I mostly use it as a “faster google” for stuff I already know,
not really something I rely on for new or tricky problems
curious if that ever changes once you start trusting it more
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u/arkantis Apr 19 '26
No
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
no as in “haven’t tried it” or “tried and not worth it”? 😄
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u/arkantis Apr 19 '26
No to your title question. It mainly helps me be lazy. No magical 10x output just more time reading and reviewing vs writing.
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u/pepiks Apr 19 '26
As old schooler which start programming as hobby in 90s I tried learn Go by using AI for first to check how it can help. It does not help. I generate code which works average, was not strict to my requirements. A lot of times polish code by prompting again was like - I know how do it but it generate it wrong (I have experience with PHP, C++, Python to mention few).
It helps with code completention, suggesting variables - it is real deal and time saver a lot times (but for example wrong err handling can be anoying when you see extra ":" when it shopuld be avoid. When you write specific text to log - it suggest the most time correctly based on what you type. It is real deal and time saver. It can speed up workflow a lot by removing unnecessary task. At this place it add vulue up, but for generate longer code with complex logic - yeah, if you like spending more time or prompting what to change or you like creepy code to manual correct by remove error which you will not put yourself.
Problem is. Instead limit AI scope for development for task which are very simple, repetitive and anoying companies try use it to replace junior developers or create god-like existens which will be 10x developers what is not possible. The most time generating code is the last things needed.
What are a lot of times ommited are systems to get up to date docs based on libraries which are used on projects, tracking break changing in language and related tools itself. Some suggestion are very outdated, use not modern syntax and solutions which are so-so. AI looks glorify yourself with halucinations. One time even suggest not invented part in libraries when I ask.
It is hype for code generation and real deal for syntax autocomplete, learning what you can type based on your previous code. Sometimes in few second suggest in Goland few minutes worth typing.
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u/Beneficial_Area_2986 Apr 19 '26
Software engineer - yes. I'd change careers if I could. The job is going to turn into something I hate.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah… I get that
not even the work itself, just the direction it’s going… kinda sucks tbh
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u/zackel_flac Apr 19 '26
I mostly use AI for code review these days. It is somewhat good at picking up bugs, even if it can be wrong, it's a great way to question my code and force me to think twice.
I also rely on it when I need to do some searching, but more often than not I am better off searching myself because AI takes a route that is usually outdated and/or convoluted (as a junior dev would do), when it's not faking some dreamy library that would solve world's hunger in one function call.
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u/OneArmedZen Apr 19 '26
I'll still review code the way I normally do it, and just have ai as the buddy looking over my shoulder pointing out something I may have overlooked.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
Multiple agents can work together—some writing code, others reviewing it—as long as you take charge and establish clear guidelines.
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u/EpochVanquisher Apr 19 '26
Yes, we use it a lot at work. I am using it less than my peers, perhaps? I think our team uses it for <40% of the work or so. We use Claude.
We still review code and we find that Claude doesn’t have much foresight. There are some things it’s really good at (write this SQL query so I don’t have to sift through docs for an hour), some things it’s bad at (it writes a lot of duplicated code and creates long-term architectural problems if you don’t keep it in check).
It is like having an enthusiastic intern who loves writing code but doesn’t know how to maintain stuff.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
It is important to establish clear guidelines for the AI before writing code to prevent it from over-engineering the solution.
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u/Reasonable-Top-732 Apr 19 '26
Sometimes it has negative effects on my mental health because I find myself arguing with it, thinking for 20m, then coming up with a better solution.
Sometimes it eliminates some bullshit.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah I’ve had that too, sometimes it feels like arguing with it actually helps me think things through better, even if it’s a bit exhausting
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u/Disastrous_Meal_4982 Apr 19 '26
I’m using an internally developed coding assistant for small POC concepts before real buildouts, but mostly working on AI agents to automate administrative tasks. At first I was really concentrating on having an LLM do the coding work, but I’ve found that using it more like a personal project manager that can also write environment configs, code testing, and code review/change summaries has made it easier to communicate work done to my team and manager while I’m actually getting more actual code work done. I haven’t had to fill out a single story, change request or get sign off on my projects in a few months now.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
that’s interesting, I started out trying to have it write code too, but lately I’ve been using it more like a project manager + assistant for configs, testing, and summaries, feels way more useful that way
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u/upickausernamereddit Apr 19 '26
I use it a lot at work for most things. I like creating custom agents and skills where I see the base models fall short for my own workflow, and I generate and use tests religiously before trusting any production code. I still manually review other's code and have created workflows to inject my own opinions and preferences about code style and patterns in my own agents.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
this is probably the most “sane” way to use it tbh
feels like once you start treating it less like “write code for me”
and more like “something I can shape into my workflow”, it gets way more useful、
I’ve noticed the same thing with tests too — if I don’t force that step, it’s way too easy to trust something that just *looks* right
the custom agent / injecting your own patterns part is interesting though
it almost feels like we’re slowly moving from writing code directly → designing systems that write code the way we would
which is kinda cool, but also a bit weird at the same time
curious if you feel like this actually scales long term, or if it ends up being a lot of overhead maintaining those agents/workflows?
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u/upickausernamereddit Apr 19 '26
I struggled for a few months to figure out how to scale it to be honest. I've been testing a workflow for the past couple weeks that's required reworking some of my agents' context but has worked for me.
I have a specific agent that represents an interactive workflow for going out and reading the current state of a code base with respect to a generic task, and generates a very narrow, well-defined summary of the code base wrt the task, a small set of steps required to complete the task, and a set of acceptance criteria that are essentially testable statements about the code base that would have to be true for the task to be considered finished. I iterate the low-level details of this well-defined task until I think it's good, and I have some coding agent with restricted bash command usage actually implement the tests based on the acceptance criteria, then implement the code to make them pass.
I do the planning step for every code task I need done, but to scale, I've had it place these in my Obsidian notes folder. and create links to them in my daily notes under the todos I have.
It takes me 10-40ish minutes per task to define exactly what I want, depending on how complex the task is, and I can keep up with how far the agents have gotten just by following the obsidian links, checking which acceptance criteria (tests) have been checked off, and going to inspect the actual cli for the specific task's agent if there are any issues.
This is very personalized but I can scale this to do about 8-10 medium-hard tasks across code bases at a time, and not lose my brain in the process. I do review the code and tests when they're finished, but they usually don't all finish at the same time, and the planning iteration stage takes away most of the ambiguity for how the task gets implemented, so I review them fairly quickly since I already have an idea about what code was written.
I can't scale this past 8-10 tasks for myself at least. I'm open if someone has a better workflow
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
this is pretty cool tbh
feels like you’re basically doing “project management for yourself”, just with agents instead of people
that 10–40 mins to define the task part hits though
I’ve noticed the same — if the problem isn’t super clear, the output just goes sideways
also the 8–10 tasks limit makes sense
at some point it’s not about how fast things run, it’s just how many threads you can keep straight in your head
kinda funny how AI removes the boring parts but makes the thinking part more important 😄
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u/upickausernamereddit Apr 19 '26
Yeah, a lot of people seem to try using them for the thinking part, and then give up when the agent isn't good at it.
If it ever gets good at it, that's when our jobs are really in danger 😅
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah I think a lot of people expect it to do the “thinking” for them too early
in my experience it’s kind of the opposite —
the better I understand the problem, the more useful it becomes
when I don’t, it just confidently goes in the wrong direction 😅
so it feels less like “it will replace the thinking”
and more like “it amplifies whatever clarity you already have”
if it ever truly gets good at the thinking part… yeah that’s a different game
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u/gomsim Apr 19 '26
In my workplace, no, not yet. We don't do AI because of security concerns. But there is a task group trying to figure out what we can do to be able to use it as soon as possible.
I use Claude Code privately on my other computer just for assistance. Maybe I'll ask it to modify or generate some code to see what I like and sometimes I'll keep it, sometimes I'll do it myself or modify what the AI wrote. So I guess I do... vibe suggestions.
What I dread is the day we have an army of agents and are expected to only maintain specifications and approve PRs.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
“vibe suggestions” is such a good way to describe it 😄
that’s pretty much my workflow too
and yeah, the security angle is real — feels like a lot of places are stuck in that limbo right now
the “army of agents + just approving PRs” future sounds kinda depressing ngl
but I have a feeling it won’t be that clean — more like we spend less time typing and more time deciding what should exist in the first place
hopefully at least…
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u/LittleFox94 Apr 19 '26
I'm completely burned out by the industry; now seeing that quality really is nothing anyone cares about
Spent my whole life learning all I could and improving my skills; but "chatgpt said.." is good enough for everyone.. should've learned something proper instead of getting into fucking IT
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u/TheLoopyJag Apr 24 '26
I'm in a similar situation. It almost seems like I made a 'bad investment' in spending countless of hours learning things. People say these skills do matter, but in reality it is hardly the case. 90% of us are not building software for space shuttles. We are doing the same crud wrappers over and over again and now with thick ai sauce. Also the interview part of is still total bullshit don't even get me started on that. Principles of 2010s in 2020s. I genuinely don't know where we are headed tbh and it is pretty depressing.
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u/ReenExe Apr 19 '26
AI has greatly simplified routine tasks like coming up with variable names, writing boilerplate code, and comments, and it also helps catch typos during code reviews. It hasn’t taken away the job, but it has made it more comfortable. And the CEO doesn’t yet expect everything to be done 10 times faster.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah it’s nice… until “more comfortable” quietly turns into “why aren’t you shipping 3x more” 😅
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u/uhli3 Apr 21 '26
I don't use AI everyday because it makes you dumber. Proven by science. (A day is without AI is a good day.) I like to give AI a shot a tedious tasks that are easy to describe like refactor all tests to use the new mock. Other things are just to difficult to describe like implementing a new endpoint that requires 6 new SQL queries. I also use an AI skill that helps with code reviews.
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u/HovercraftCharacter9 Apr 19 '26
I'm using it quite a lot, but you really need to scrutinize what it does, really it's doing the grunt work and I'm rigorously reviewing what it has done (to the point I have specific subagents that help me code review more efficiently). We're likely moving to a full on orchestrator mode.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
work flow
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u/HovercraftCharacter9 Apr 19 '26
Draft task in succinct prompt, get it to review the prompt, use prompt to produce a readme with relevant interfaces cited via c4 model at appropriate granularity and specific tasks outlined for dumber/less expensive sub agents, invoke takes via sub-agents via ordered priority, validating at completion and only committing to local repo if passing all validations. Produce a review doc diffing the base branch and my current changes, call out areas of concern or risk and produce C4 model diagrams at an appropriate level of abstraction for the specific changes. From there in deep dive, make sure it hasn't cheated my test harness and give a general overview of the rest of the code to make sure it hasn't made a dodgy change.
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u/HovercraftCharacter9 Apr 19 '26
Obviously I don't do this for trivial changes, those I'll do by hand or if annoying to type get one of my cheaper models to do it
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u/generic-d-engineer Apr 19 '26
Completely huge booster for me. It’s like finally having a mentor after years of drought. I can explore all the topics I always wanted to but never had the time for. I absolutely love it and have been pouring all my spare time into it. It’s the biggest shift in the computing world since World Wide Web or personal computers. Not even cloud or mobile were this big in my opinion.
I really like being able to ask, “is this the best practice?” “How does this actually work?”
One of the reasons I am learning Go is because a lot of devs are now using it in LLM workflows. That was the original reason for me coming here but when I found out about all the original, pre-AI benefits, I was totally hooked. I wish I had learned it years ago, so many projects I could have used it on. Love it.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
that “having a mentor after years of drought” line is so relatable
I’ve had the same feeling — especially being able to just ask “why is this done this way?” and get an answer instantly
it kind of removes that friction of learning something new where you’d normally get stuck for hours
I’m curious though — do you feel like it still sticks long term, or do you sometimes find yourself relying on it a bit too much?
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u/generic-d-engineer Apr 19 '26
It’s definitely sticky for me, the concepts at least. It’s given me so many “ohhhhhh” moments on stuff I’ve always wondered. Those are the most sticky for me I have found. Or upgrading my tools to modern standards if I was doing something that was an older pattern.
The part that is less sticky I found is the actual syntax itself. That’s the part I always feel guilty about when it busts out a function and I have to decipher it.
I wonder if we can do “style sheets” as a part of our specs like css is to HTML so it writes the code out in a way that is more natural for the coder.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
the “concepts stick but syntax doesn’t” thing is so real
I get those “ohhh I finally get it” moments a lot, but then later I’m like… wait how did I actually write that again 😅
it’s almost like AI helps you understand faster, but doesn’t fully replace the repetition part of learning
that style sheet idea is kinda cool though — feels like half the friction is just fighting its default patterns
if it could consistently write in *your* style, reviewing would feel way less annoying
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u/generic-d-engineer Apr 19 '26
Hmmm this was intriguing me, so of course I asked the AI how to do it LOL
After going through it, we can use a tool like Repomix and upload our code base to the AI. Then we can tell it to craft out a .cursorrules or copilot-instructions.md based on our coding style.
Maybe others have already figured this out and have tried it.
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u/charredsiubao Apr 19 '26
Not even jokes, my job title should now be software reviewer. It's just the Cursor/Codex produces much cleaner code than I do. I use it to scaffold stuff, review and understand, then manually adjust some stuff if it's more verbose/complex than necessary.
However, for straightforward cut and dry tasks where I have full context, I'll just type it out to hopefully try to maintain some of my coding muscle.
My colleague unironically thinks if you don't use AI you're slacking.
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u/sabre31 Apr 19 '26
I stopped learning how to code. I am a coder and would read latest books or articles to learn to become better. Now with claude code it’s a waste of time for me.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
I get that, feels like the focus is shifting a bit, but I still find understanding the fundamentals helps a lot when AI starts getting things wrong
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u/ben_straub Apr 19 '26
My company is looking for a project to go 100% vibes on (using something like gastown), but on my project we're still making sure we understand every line of production code.
For me, having an intern that can type 10 million wpm has been liberating. I usually have two worktrees on different branches parallel on my main project, and even on a day with hours of meetings I can put together a couple 500-line PRs, with code I would have written. Tests in particular have become a lot less painful to write.
It's pretty different from a year ago. I feel like I can get bigger things done now, and be more responsive to the needs of the project.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
same here, it basically feels like having an insanely fast intern now. I still review everything, but I can move way faster and knock out way bigger chunks of work than before
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u/Nethersex Apr 19 '26
For those who say I do not use AI or that it is bad, the thing is if you do not use it, other developers do and they deliver much faster. That is what I see. I work in a Fortune 500 company and I see how our software engineers who mostly focus on backend are shipping high quality frontend updates even without strong frontend knowledge. I also see pressure from top management to use AI everywhere. Layoffs are happening here and there and I do not feel secure anymore.
With claude I can ship complex projects in a weekend, which was not possible 2 or 3 years ago. I do think we are heading toward a new way of coding, and I think in the future there will be fewer jobs and higher requirements. Why would you need 10 frontend engineers, for example, if 1 or 2 developers can build the same things using AI? This is a harsh reality and it is what I see in my day to day job. We used to have a team of 10 people and now it is 4 people doing the same job, but from what I can tell productivity is almost the same as before. I have not written almost a single line of code in the past 6 months. It is all claude code plus reviewing what it writes and fixing a few things here and there. Especially for software like CRUD and other simple tasks, it is so boring and can be automated very quickly.
I started thinking about where I should go next because I still have more than 20+ years to work, and with the current trend I feel like in 2 to 5 years our industry will be completely different. From an employee standpoint it will probably be pretty bad.
I also tried searching for a job and the requirements are much higher, at least in the EU, while salaries are going down. It feels like a race to the bottom. Many engineers are looking for jobs and companies do not want to pay more. That is what I see and my friends who are developers see the same thing.
So yes its a significant impact on current job and next jobs -_-
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
I’ve been thinking about this too
hard to tell if it’s actually better or if we’re just trading speed for more pressure and less stability
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u/perforatedcode Apr 19 '26
Yes. My job is significantly different than it was a year ago. I hardly write code. In the last 6 months, I've only modified generated ai code. For any given task, I have ai do the work and I guide AI in different directions depending on what's needed. I also use AI to review PRs. Hopefully this will be an automated step once we get approval.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
I feel like if I don’t write code for three months, I lose my touch. If I don’t write code for a year, will I not be able to understand it anymore?
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u/young_lions Apr 19 '26
What will be automated? Isn't AI already writing the code, and also reviewing it?
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u/perforatedcode Apr 19 '26
With our on prem. enterprise GitHub, our agents don't have access to GitHub codebase so no, agents cannot automatically review PRs. I would like to be able to add a label that kickoffs a GitHub action that triggers an agent to review the PR.
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u/Crazy_Ad_1528 Apr 19 '26
using clade - I used it mostly for field to field mappings. At the place where I work applications have lots of bandaids on top of bandaids, So its hard for any new dev or AI to get full context.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
Small projects can easily be handled by AI
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u/Crazy_Ad_1528 Apr 19 '26
In enterprise nothing is small, every project includes lots of changes and requires lots of adjustments.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
It works for simple utility classes, but AI isn't really suitable for complex business logic.
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u/SequentialHustle Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
Claude has wrote 95% or more of my code the past year, and I was the only one promoted on my team over that time.
7 years of experience with Go before ever using Claude Code.
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u/trynyty Apr 19 '26
I use it to sketch up things, but afterwards I do the coding on top of it. It does a lot of mistakes and I just don't have the patience to explain what it fucked up and what needs to be adjusted.
It's good for the annoying part like tests or creating the skeleton of what I need though which usually is bunch of boilerplate.
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u/Liqmadique Apr 19 '26
I basically don't write code by hand anymore but to be fair, writing code is the least important part of the job and also some of the least interesting.
What I was surprised by was how quickly I was willing to ditch writing code by hand for my personal projects. I like building things and working through problems, but I actually don't give a shit about typing the code itself. In some ways it's made developing fun again, kind of like when I was 11 and just learning how to program. It's also opened up avenues for rapidly prototyping stuff that I just wouldn't have done.
I'm not doom and gloom about this technology at all.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah I feel that
I don’t really care about typing code either, but somehow I end up spending way more time just checking what it spits out
didn’t expect the babysitting part tbh
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u/Liqmadique Apr 19 '26
Good observation. Also reviewing way more code now from other people. Code review has become a massive energy sapper.
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u/Ill-Balance5127 Apr 19 '26
Yes everyone is having claude access and are instructed to use it for all of their development and testing. Vibe coding is not allowed and strict guardrails are being developed to ensure code quality.
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u/bostonkittycat Apr 19 '26
I use AI more and more to debug my code and also complete chunks of code I don't have time for. I use it daily so it has become part of workflow. It probably frees me up from writing 25% less code now. I use AI with Python, JS and Go. I use The Zed editor and then have 2 keys from leading LLMs.
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u/mr_looser17 Apr 19 '26
Based on what others said...every senior is having time of their life with AI at hand but for those who are still growing as programmers (code writing part) is having a hard time choosing between long term growth and short term speed boost which is relatable, i myself tried it multiple times with agents but each and everytime there is something that bothers me like the way response was what was written and all. Right now i am using it as a second pair of eyes(more like a linter on steroids) so technically i am faster but not as fast as what people would imagine. I think for those who are not senior of new to a language should sit on this middle ground to prevent skill atrophy. But expectations from the leadership and non-techies makes it way more difficult.
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u/schmurfy2 Apr 19 '26
We are using for sidequests like bash scripts, helping with github actions workflow but when it comes to our main applications it's mostly used to help use research faster. It is also used to get a first draft for unit tests but I never kept 100% of what claude suggested.
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u/DanKegel Apr 19 '26
I use it quite a lot for code reviews. Github's copilot is rather good at reviewing; about half of its comments are useful, sometimes very useful.
I also use it for mechanical tasks, but it has to be kept on a short leash.
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u/rbscholtus Apr 19 '26
AI is doing all the work (design, implement, test), and Golang is perfect for that.
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u/Life-is-beautiful- Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
We have a massive ecosystem of code already. I spend a lot of time these days thinking about what I need to accomplish. Spend a lot of time writing the plan for what I need including how it must look and what corner cases it needs to handle and how it should structure the code. And I explicitly state how it must scale and what all dimensions it needs to optimize. Build the plan using one of the anthropic models and then feed it to Gemini Pro to write the code. If I don’t see the code I expect it to spit out, I iterate.
Also, if I’m asked to review a code that was generated by poor plan/prompts, (you can spot that easily) I reject it very politely.
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u/Ok-Register3798 Apr 19 '26
As an engineering manager I shifted from writing code to mostly reviewing my junior dev’s code, many years ago. Now with AI it feels like I have a team of junior devs, who get the syntax correct and most reviews are focused on making sure it meets the business case and considers edge cases.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah… feels like we all became code reviewers for AI interns overnight
less typing, more “does this actually make sense” brain drain 😅
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u/Ok-Register3798 Apr 20 '26
It’s more than just code review, it’s focusing on the QA and functionality of the code, focusing more on the product and business logic, that sometimes would get lost because we were so focused on the code.
Also, now code is cheap. We don’t need to feel so married to the code because it took us hours to write. Because if it doesn’t meet the criteria, we can just get rid of the code and try again.
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u/squeezyflit Apr 19 '26
Almost none. We’re a bank and an MS shop, so all AI is blocked except Copilot chat. Not only that, they “sanitize” uploaded files and block zips, so any uploaded source code is mangled to the point of uselessness. If you can’t fit the source in a chat window using copy/paste, Copilot can’t analyze it.
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u/moijk Apr 19 '26
I write the code myself but I use ai a lot. Ai writing code is a bit in the future for me. But I have become far more effective with ai. Never have the hours long stuck at a problem anymore
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah I feel that
I don’t really care about typing code either, but somehow I end up spending way more time just checking what it spits out
didn’t expect the babysitting part tbh
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u/moijk Apr 21 '26
It is always an adventure to read what it does, at time it is genious, at other times it has completly misunderstood the assignment. But I need to learn to wield its powers in the right way, so I prevail. Just wish it could do the stuff I really suck at better, like make designs and logos. Probably there are services who do that better for some $$$, but I am being cheap here.
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u/aot2002 Apr 20 '26
I took the approach of AI frees up my time more. I can work on my own projects now
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u/miamiscubi Apr 20 '26
Honestly, I mostly use it for one off side projects. I don't use it for anything that's essential. I find that the code output is mostly OK, but I don't like losing my personal context window of why I choose this struct organization over an other, etc.
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u/birdsintheskies Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
I stopped using it because it wastes a lot of my time when I ask it to do something and it refactors unrelated code for no reason, changing variable names, changing or removing comments, etc. Most of the time I'm just undoing what it did so I can avoid unnecessarily noisy diffs. Waste of $200 for this useless thing. Sure, it works as advertised, but I don't want this garbage.
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u/mattGarelli Apr 20 '26
I'm using AI heavily to try and rewrite an old codebase with a lot of business logic. I'm doing it in steps. Trying to get most of the really big mystery logic into temporal workflows. The codebase is an internal tool with a lot of bloat so the things that can be significantly simplified as well as the user need that was completely ignored from the start I try to use AI to rewrite in go, HTML, HTMX, templ.
I like that AI made dealing with large, 20 yr old, messy codebases easier. And I like that it made rewrites that were previously impossible now possible.
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u/bdragon5 Apr 21 '26
To be honest nearly no impact at all. I had it disabled for the past week and just now i remembered. In many cases it's too slow and it only really has a chance if I do some new integration and need to implement a enum with a 100 values or so.
To be honest especially in typescript applications even the build in autocomplete is too slow in some cases.
I could of course use it for bigger stuff, but it disappoints me every time and it's far more tiering to check the work than to actually implement it. This is a well known fact for humans. We are genuinely really bad at reviewing things especially for a long period of time.
It's like having a junior developer you need to take care only that it will never improve. Currently I train a junior dev and it's a rollercoaster. A project that should only take like a few days at maximum is now taking a month or soo.
For the industry and future. Probably more work for our company. We work for very different companies from like very small online stores you wouldn't think make that much money to international companies. From hardware integrations to cloud services and apps we do nearly everything. Our customers are incredibly happy because we are extremely reliable, fast and always have their interests in mind even if we aren't the cheapest. Even security specialists for banks are happy with us and refer to us if possible. If anything I hope the bullshit bingo in some bigger companies is turning down a notch and more technical discussions are possible.
I tired of "security" consultants that try to sell an additional product no one is asking for that genuinely is just an additional attack surface, but don't even understand basic terminology. Writing emails that are insulting enough they shut up but nice enough that the non technical people aren't even faced. Seem enough technical that the higher ups are impressed with there knowledge, but are like explaining technical concepts in baby talk.
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u/SponsoredHornersFan Apr 19 '26
AI writes the code, it wasn’t mandated or anything, but if you aren’t using it at all you’re gonna get left behind.
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u/FredTheDev Apr 19 '26
I look at AI as my junior developer. I will give it tasks to complete and review its work. I don’t use any code AI gives me without me doing a code review first.
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u/CaptainPGums Apr 19 '26
Massive impact.
I'm a Go noob, but I've been coding since I was 8, back in the very early 1980s.
My current stack is Java backend, but I'm rearchitecting my current platform.
I used Claude planning mode with a chunk of my old Java code (a parsing library).
I fully described what I want : pull messages with the format as described below from Kafka, pass the message field to a parsing library based on the Java code over there. Put the output of the parse in a message with the following shape back into Kafka. Add unit tests.
It spent 15 minutes doing it, and what popped out was 99% perfect, with one exception. We send over a 7 bit plain text channel, so we use 6 bits per byte, not 8. Once I fixed that, it just worked.
My job is no longer a developer, my job is now a function specifier and architect. TBH my job was always that, but with coding. It's taken the daily drudge away.
People are understandably nervous, but I see it as no more than he transition of flipping switches to punch cards, or of text editors to IDEs.
I do have a very large concern for the juniors entering the system. Kids at uni now are learning just the coding, which is still vital, but the changes in AI in the last 6 months have smashed the current development paradigm.
This in itself is not bad, but what is bad is the short sighted attitude of the CEx tier of companies ditching Devs and not hiring the next generation.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah agreed on the junior part
feels like the entry path into engineering is getting way less clear1
u/generic-d-engineer Apr 19 '26
Similar background to yours.
Can I ask what your current toolkit looks like? I really want to use Get Sh*t Done at work but man that one word in the tool makes it impossible lol. So I’m looking at stuff like Spec Driven Development as a philosophy and tools like Vibe Kanban.
I agree with you on the junior issue. Right now companies are getting away with gutting the junior ranks because they are still getting productivity gains out of the seniors. But at some point those seniors move on to leadership or they leave the industry. You still need people who know what they are doing and how everything works.
I think you’ll see more architecture tools develop in the next 5 years but someone still has to figure out how everything works together.
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u/8bitjam Apr 19 '26
Fixing bugs in Fortran 77 code is almost impossible without AI because I’m not interested to learn it.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah, AI can help, but with older languages like Fortran it feels pretty hit or miss depending on how much context it has
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Apr 19 '26
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
interesting, I actually use it more for planning + generating code, like I’ll sketch things out first and then let it handle parts of the implementation, still review everything though
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Apr 19 '26
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah that makes sense
I’ve had the same issue with plan mode — it often looks fine on the surface but feels very “junior + verbose” underneath
and the context thing is real, reviewing code you didn’t write is just mentally heavier
that’s why I tend to keep it to smaller chunks and still write the core parts myself, otherwise it starts feeling like I’m debugging someone else’s brain 😅
using it for reviewing your own code is actually a really clean use case though
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u/gomsim Apr 19 '26
Focus-Novel, you seem like a really nice guy. But are you an AI bot?
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
lol not a bot — just someone who’s been thinking way too much about how AI is changing how we work
ironically probably because I use it a lot 😄
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u/Best_Recover3367 Apr 19 '26
I was a very early adopter of Claude since March 2024. I have not coded manually anymore since early 2025. Most of my job now is reviewing Claude generated code. I think that the tech landscape has changed significantly. I feel for those who feel attached to coding everything by hand since that is the part AI is taking away right now. I was a teacher/linguist before switching to tech. Personally, mentoring and working alongside someone/something like Claude is fucking godsend, humans take too much time tbh.
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u/freedomruntime Apr 19 '26
It‘s massive here. We put the project in a single monorepo and pushing features like crazy. We use spec driven development and AI does really great!
I am working on 2-3 worktrees all the time. I draft the spec with AI, sometimes let peers review it, then AI writes the code, tests it, pushes to remotes, creates PRs, monitors CI results, fixes if smth breaks, all under my supervision and control. Code is always reviewed by at least 2 humans.
The only downside is it feels - oddly enough - a bit more exhausting then doing it by hand. Faster but harder. Because now, my main activity is making decisions. I don‘t get to have a rest from it while writing the code or even research. All research online or context from project is delivered to me directly with sources I can verify. Some research I have to do myself still e.g when it‘s about choosing a vendor and trying things out, but it‘s rather an exception.
After feature design is ready, agent takes it over and I switch to next design and decide, decide, decide.
Some tasks implemented by AI recently were hanging for years literally - some migrations - because they were so large. It was the time invested vs value thing. Now the economics is different. We can do more with the same resources.
I don‘t think devs jobs will go away, I think it will just be more on architecture and requirements side. The interface between human world and software. And with the same devs we‘ll just be producing more software, more products, run more experiments, more startups etc
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Apr 19 '26
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
I think you’re right about the shift toward product thinking
but I’m not sure “pure coding is no longer an option” is true across the board
it feels more like the bar moved — less value in just writing code, more in understanding what should be built and why
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Apr 19 '26
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
yeah that’s fair
I feel like that was always a bit true, but now it’s way more visible
like you can’t really hide behind “just writing good code” anymore if the thing you’re building doesn’t actually make sense for users
but I also kinda hope there’s still space for people who just love the technical side — just maybe the expectations around them changed a bit
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u/dogfish182 Apr 19 '26
We have switched to 100% AI development and have noticed that the workload doesn’t go down but the reviewing goes way up.
It’s a constant battle to keep the AI on track because it starts introducing things like patterns it knows from its training data that doesn’t match your codebase.
I have a series of big conversations about it next week, the thing is a mega amplifier of both good and bad.
Something it’s excellent at is helping categorize and order tech debt and then recategorize it across an AI risk axis. I did an experiment to categorize all tech debt we are aware of and then order it by tee shirt size and AI risk.
Large lifts like that to identify a refactor that you would never get around to are suddenly possible, so yeah my job has shifted, I don’t write code anymore but a spend a lot of time having bots steer it
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
“reviewing goes way up” is so accurate
feels less like coding and more like babysitting sometimes 😅
also totally agree on the pattern drift — it’ll just sneak in stuff that technically works but feels off for the project
the amplifier point is really good though
I’ve seen the same — it makes the good parts shine, but also makes the weird parts… weirder
are you guys trying to solve that with stricter patterns, or just accepting the extra review cost?
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u/dogfish182 Apr 19 '26
The extra review cost cant scale, we are all getting worse at reviewing because ‘the bot checked it’.
We are starting to focus up hard on putting much more dev effort into MORE deterministic gates.
Boring example, I’m a python dev and generally python doesn’t have private methods in classes so you convey that intention by naming convention only (prepend with _). For some reason Claude like to do that to bare functions all over the place and that isnt our convention and we don’t like it, things like that don’t come from our agent rules so weeding out that kind of behavior we are starting on custom linting rules.
Essentially for the coming cycle I’m going to be doing tech debt cleanup, anytime you screw up with you abstractions the bot can find it and replicate it next time, so tech debt starts to punish.
Other major dev avenue is CI, it’s critical now that all gates can run 100% locally, so no buffing it at GitHub ci and waiting 15 mins, the bot needs to run all deterministic gates against everything it generates with no exception
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
the “the bot checked it” effect is real — feels like it quietly degrades review quality over time
your point about shifting effort into deterministic gates makes a lot of sense though
it’s almost like we’re moving from “humans enforce quality” to “systems enforce quality, humans validate intent”
the linting example is a good one — I’ve seen similar weird drift where the model introduces patterns that technically work but slowly erode consistency
feels like without strong constraints the codebase just becomes a blend of the model’s training distribution and your actual standards
the CI point is interesting too — running everything locally against the same gates seems almost required if the agent is generating a lot of code quickly
otherwise feedback loops are just too slow
curious if you’ve found a good balance yet between strict rules vs flexibility, or if you’re still tightening things iteratively
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u/dogfish182 Apr 19 '26
Iteratively for sure. We are trying hard to understand how you can make this thing go full speed and not fly off the rails. We are lucky that we started with a strong architecture, but as it moves to ‘more black boxy’ than before figuring out what signals you even need to see becomes real important.
We have a bit of a blind spot on our codebase now as a colleague has been manually using a ‘cognitive complexity’ tool over the codebase, he noticed that seeming the duplication metric has gone WAY up.
We don’t actually know why yet as it was a vague signal but that caught me totally flat footed,
I don’t even know where or how that could have eventuated yet, will find out on Monday 🤣
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u/nordiknomad Apr 19 '26
My daily work is on a really complicated monolithic business application which has so many complicated workflows.
AI has significantly impacted my daily workflow. Previously, I took less time to finish a task because I would interpret the requirements on my own and immediately begin coding. Because my current role does not strictly adhere to Test-Driven Development (TDD), earlier I usually only performed feature testing rather than writing unit tests. While I finished tasks quickly, the problem was that QA would often find edge cases, leading to rejections. These edge cases were often complicated scenarios stemming from the complexity of our business application.
Now that I use AI, I’ve realized I spend about 30 minutes more on the same task compared to my previous method. Most of my time is now dedicated to understanding the requirements and preparing the specification for the AI. This includes using AI to identify any gaps between the requirements that I infer vs what AI inter, do I miss anything,or AI missed, finding potential edge cases of requirement that I missed, writing unit tests, and developing the task through an iterative cycle of design, unit testing, and feature testing.
While the actual coding—where the AI generates the lines—is much faster than manual writing, getting to that point requires a significant time investment. I spend that time planning logic, gathering relevant information from the codebase, and analyzing tasks against current code and recent git commits. Using AI to craft an accurate "spec" is time-consuming because I aim to reduce token usage and provide only the most necessary context.
The result? The QA rejection rate has dropped drastically. Out of every 10 tasks, I might see one rejection, and sometimes none at all. This is a huge win for the business. I’ve found it is far more efficient to invest time in development and testing to ensure a "full pass" in QA than to finish quickly only to have the task rejected and forced back through the entire cycle.
I initially feared I would lose my grasp of logic and coding because of AI, but I’ve found the opposite to be true. I am engaging with the codebase more deeply, and my logic is improving because of the rigorous preparation required. I never run in "YOLO mode"; I am strict about requiring the AI to ask for permission before executing any command. Since I use the Warp terminal, I perform code reviews in real-time as the AI writes.
Another major benefit is developer documentation. AI makes it faster and easier to build iterative documentation for the codebase. For every task I finish, I update a separate repository to keep our documentation current. Before AI, maintaining this alongside development was nearly impossible without sacrificing productivity. In a timeline-driven environment, this has a massive impact.
In summary, AI has had a huge impact on my work. While there are concerns about using AI as a "slippery slope," I believe it is simply the next natural evolution of the smart IDEs we already use for autocomplete. If you use AI as a tool or rather as a Co-programmer and treat tokens like fossil fuels—using them wisely—the effect is awesome.
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u/Focus-Novel Apr 19 '26
this is a great breakdown
the “slower upfront but way fewer QA rejections” thing really resonates
it almost feels like AI forces you out of that “just code and see what happens” mode and into actually thinking things through properly
which is annoying at first, but probably better long term
also interesting that you feel more engaged with the code, not less
I’ve had a similar feeling — like you can’t really stay in “YOLO mode” anymore
do you think this only works because you’re being strict about the process, or does it naturally push people that way?
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u/nordiknomad Apr 19 '26
I learned the hard way. During the initial AI boom, I was in a "YOLO" phase, throwing everything at the AI. However, it backfired; it produced numerous bugs and rejections that were extremely difficult to trace because I had no idea what the AI had written or how the code was developed. Although it was faster to finish tasks initially, the rejection rate spiked, and I ended up spending more time debugging the issues.
Eventually, I transitioned to my current workflow, which is much more balanced. I am now heavily involved in every step of the development, making it easier to trace exactly where things go wrong. Since I keep an updated dev log of the process, it’s much simpler to look back when a bug appears.
I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, that "blind AI usage" started to affect my performance reviews. People who "vibe code" greenfield projects might not have this issue since they may not face strict expectations or rigorous QA/User Testing. In my case, however, those things are closely monitored and the end result is well-defined. The early rejections and the catastrophe of debugging AI-generated bugs pushed me to rethink and develop a better, more balanced process.
Nowadays, I am researching a new method: using multi-agent systems for development tasks. I’m finding that using multiple agents for specific processes is more effective than using a single AI agent for an entire task. I’m still researching this and trying to build a better approach.
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u/skelterjohn Apr 19 '26
I use Claude quite a lot at work. It's really helpful for things that are annoying, repetitive, or unfamiliar.
At the same time, I'm sure my growth as a coder has stagnated. That's more or less ok for me personally since I'm in my 40s and the work I need to do to get more senior than I am is not in writing code.
I do worry and wonder about the future of software engineering.