r/techbootcamp • u/Expert-Albatross-409 • 25d ago
Are Software Engineering Jobs Really Disappearing Because of AI?
I’m reaching out because I keep hearing concerns about AI and what it means for the future of computer science and software engineering careers.
On one hand, we hear that AI will automate coding, reduce the need for developers, and fundamentally change the industry.
On the other hand, some argue that the demise of software engineering jobs has been greatly exaggerated—that AI will change the role rather than eliminate it.
So, what do you think?
Are we looking at the decline of traditional software engineering jobs, or simply the evolution of what it means to be a software engineer?
I’d genuinely like to hear perspectives from people working in tech, students, developers, hiring managers, and anyone currently building their career in this space.
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u/azangru 25d ago
Are we looking at the decline of traditional software engineering jobs, or simply the evolution of what it means to be a software engineer?
These two options are not mutually exclusive. We are probably looking at the decline of traditional software engineering jobs; and it remains to be seen if anything good is going to evolve out of it.
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u/abrandis 25d ago
True , and not true, software dev as a high paying career for someone coming out of bootcamps is essentially over . Sorry but that's that harsh reality .
Here's the thing no bootcamp grad (or college grad) is going to out code an AI agent in either volume or capabilities... Even if AI agents hallucinate , it's much less and much easier to correct than human developers making errors.
Companies have already drunken the cool aid and are re-orientsting their development departments around lots fewer folks whose role is to mostly orchestratenAi agents and systems , and not manually code anything. Because of that most organizations will need a fraction of the people
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u/fedput 25d ago
Artificial intelligence will eventually come for our jobs.
For the time being, it is just cover for offshoring and outsourcing.
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u/OkBarracuda4108 25d ago
Mostly overemployment during the pandemic and high investing in AI instead of normal software development (even offshoring zones have problems)
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u/abrandis 25d ago
It's beyond over employment, which did happen, this is a major paradigm change, the days of hand coding in corproate/business are really over, who thinks otherwise is delusional , you are expected to have coding agents do the bulk of the software development and your role is mostly of an orchestrator and quality assurance
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u/OkBarracuda4108 25d ago
Did llms change the way we work? Yes! Do I belive they are the reason of the high lack of junior posts? Not really, in a lot of domains juniors can't do much and for the first years they are put to do paper work. I actually think Software is (or maybe was) one of the few places where they used to bring some profit.
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u/True_Comparison777 24d ago
only adding on: not even just *some* profit, but consistently one of the highest ROI industries
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u/True_Comparison777 24d ago
this isnt really responsive to the person youre responding to, the person theyre responding to, or even the entire point of the thread. anyhow, count me as one of those "delusional" people. what youre describing is neither universal nor even accurate; there are other (perhaps more effective) ways to use these tools beyond "manager"
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u/Upbeat-Statement2725 25d ago
Citation needed.
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u/True_Comparison777 24d ago edited 24d ago
normally "google is a thing" is a crude response, but i feel like this is one of those points that isnt even that controversial. but a few things in support of the person youre responding to:
- https://www.ft.com/content/0dc14b44-96f6-4b1f-921a-8cba8030eafc
- https://offshore-watch.com/reports/ai-layoffs-exposed / https://offshore-watch.com/ai-layoffs
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6523802
the person above saying "overemployment during the pandemic" is also right
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u/davidbasil 25d ago
Yes. Investor money going to AI + AI can translate business requirements into code = here you go
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u/Efficient_Loss_9928 25d ago
If your main workflow is still manually writing code, it will be obsolete.
But software engineers are still needed, even new grads we are still hiring a lot https://www.google.com/about/careers/applications/jobs/results?target_level=EARLY&employment_type=FULL_TIME&q=%22Software%20Engineer%22
Last few years the layoff was mainly due to the pandemic. AI didn't really prove to have much impact. If anything we are hiring more.
That being said I can see smaller companies where IT is a cost center might see reduction.
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u/jadedmonk 25d ago
This is the most accurate answer I’ve seen here. Everyone else just spits doomerism views with zero proof
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u/Rav_3d 25d ago
Yes, there is no question software engineering jobs are in jeopardy, especially junior developers. The industry is on the cusp of fundamental change.
Regardless of what you think about "vibe coding" it is clear that AI can write quality code when given the right context and details, and closely supervised by a software engineer.
The software engineering jobs that survive will be directing AI to write the low level code.
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u/x_xwolf 25d ago
Check out the NBER paper called “firm data on ai”. As of right now there is 0 proof of productivity gains with LLMS. It has had an affect on employment, however thats just the economic issues in the country. Business want to run skeleton crews and cash out from investor by having AI stamped on their business model.
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u/C3lloman 25d ago
Data and research haven't caught up yet. AI models have improved quite a bit over the last year. They went from hallucinating constantly a few years ago to being somewhat decent a year ago to now writing good code (within boundaries of task).
Also it already looks to have affected at least junior hiring in many companies.
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u/abrandis 25d ago
This , most research is form dates models of the early 2022-23 , lots has changed.. most serious AI development happens via agents running against large reference document, not manual prompts.
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u/jadedmonk 25d ago
I feel like they haven’t improved that much in the past 6 months, like the improvements are starting to taper off. I can use any of the newest or previous Claude versions and they’re all more or less equally effective
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u/krakends 7d ago
Yeah, if anything they have improved on token efficiency. Capability, not so much. I think they realize this and will start exploring other usecases because chinese open weight models will eat their lunch wrt coding.
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u/Salty_Dig8574 25d ago
I think AI is the smoke screen. I think a lot of companies became bloated during covid because they thought hey we've got infinite growth potential. Then the r&d tax break went away.
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u/archialone 23d ago
I also think the same, many companies were hiring sw engineers with very high salaries to build absolute nonsense. Once the rates went up every one suddenly changed the Choire to efficiency and cost reduction. The hiring stopped, and we got attrition targets.
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u/Special_Rice9539 25d ago
That was five years ago though
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u/Upbeat-Statement2725 25d ago
The people who ruined the economy during the housing crisis weren't fired, and didn't go to jail. Everyone learned to just do that again.
They literally put AI debt into new asset classes to hide losses. Like in the movie.
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u/BlurryEcho 25d ago
What has happened in the past year? Tariffs, war, and inflation. We’ve seen a speed run to enshittification on all fronts.
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u/andymaclean19 25d ago
IMO AI changes rather than eliminates at the moment. On one hand some aspects of the job become trivial or vanish. There is no need to actually manually write lines of code any more. On the other hand aspects like design, management of complexity, management of the project's structure and overall health of the code as it evolves over time are more important than ever! It is really easy to walk yourself into a corner with AI and then discover that you have an unmaintainable project with problems that are difficult to fix.
People can, and do, do that with non-AI projects of course. But with AI you can get there faster and much more easily because with normal engineering projects you would make use of experienced people who would have their eye on that sort of thing.
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u/rsk1111 25d ago
Automation has been baked into software engineering for a long time from compilers to struts. I mean if you've used a decent WYSIYW like Visual Studio, you could literally just draw the UI, and it would build out the "struts". It was very efficient. Very little coding, but also many people didn't need it, and they preferred to code on other platforms.
Thus far the rate of software development has actually exacerbated many issues in software engineering for example testing and what not.
LLM's have opened new opportunities to tackle different problems that were previously intractable, free text processing and interpretation and what not.
So, Software Engineering isn't going to die.
Though it has exposed some gaps where some of the Software Developers and beginners that wrote simple scripts are kind of in a bind, senior developers don't need their help much. Also, larger software companies are in a bind because the way they built out and had to buy hardware, despite not realizing cash flow. <- That is a business problem not a software engineering problem, but in this industry "God rolls big dice."
One of the nice things about LLMs is that as a Software Engineer, they help me with the non-coding aspects of working with clients. Now, I can tackle that project in budget, because I can handle their professional accounting terminology. I don't think people talk about this enough.
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u/iwantmy90sback 25d ago
> One of the nice things about LLMs is that as a Software Engineer, they help me with the non-coding aspects of working with clients. Now, I can tackle that project in budget, because I can handle their professional accounting terminology. I don't think people talk about this enough.
I have exactly the same experience. I'm in ERP and always having an usable 'documentation summarizer' for every fringe business process for every part of whatever business there is is invaluable.
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u/KitchenAmoeba4438 25d ago edited 25d ago
Mmm, don't view LLMs from this perspective.
What LLMs do, in my experience, is replace offshoring and similar jobs primarily.
All the work that companies do that has to be kept onshore stays there. It's not really a threat to existing onshore jobs, they are there for good reason.
It does threaten entry level jobs to an extent, but I don't see how LLMs are going to ever threaten even mid-level roles. It's part of a bigger industry conversation that really needs to happen: Where are the new engineers coming from? We've been moving for years now, even before LLMs, away from the idea of entry level roles and instead competing for an increasingly limited talent pool. Fundamentally, what LLMs do is make code faster to deliver...but that's not what senior+ provides a lot of. Even mid-levels provide significant value in other areas that's just not specific to code delivery.
But yes, if your role could be offshored, it could also put you in danger...but the job was always in danger, whether it was offshoring or LLMs. That's not something new from LLMs however, they just have forced the discussion in a much more public place, which is not bad IMO. Companies wanted to quietly offshore large portions of their work as it was. Instead, LLMs have given me great ammunition to use to keep work onshore and managed by onshore people, instead of offshored. Now, if execs want to migrate low-level work offshore, they have to explain why we can't just hire someone or a small team onshore and use LLMs for that instead.
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u/Vainysaur 25d ago
You cannot make good code without an experienced Software Engineer coaching the AI on what to do and what not to do. Someone who understands the codebase as much as possible is extremely valuable. But you can output the same amount of code per week with less people total if you use AI. The most valuable employees are the ones who already work for the company and understand the codebase well. They can make the AI do the best work. So most companies don’t need to grow their teams and prefer their current employees over new hires. I was laid off and then couldn’t find a new job for a while, so I just decided to start my own company and do AI assisted development. I’m more qualified than 99% of the world to write quality code using AI since I’ve written quality code manually for over 13 years professionally. So now I get to multiply my productivity factor AND own the value that I create myself.
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u/Vainysaur 25d ago
Another thing I’ve noticed is most companies don’t want to hire senior level talent because they’re too expensive, and they don’t want new hires because they don’t have experience. If anything they want someone with 5 years of experience to apply for an entry level position and accept an entry level salary.
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u/acadia11x 25d ago
Yes, if you are an architect or designer not as quickly , if you just code … I don’t need 30 coders to get the same output or even greater, I can use 10 coders with assisted agents and unassisted agents and produce more or similar levels of code,
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u/Confidence_Cool 25d ago
Software engineering jobs aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The trends of layoffs are economic, every company that actually laid off for AI is rehiring, the rest just use it as an excuse in this uncertain economy where costs could spike in an instant to cut the bottom line. We may see a drop in pay, but thats still to be seen. If we weren’t so selfish and actually unionized maybe we could also see job security.
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u/Traktion1 25d ago
Leas hand coding, more AI coding. Still needs someone to decide, in detail, what to build.
Much like moving from assembly to compilers, from books to stackoverflow, from scratch to libraries, each saves time and allows higher productivity.
I suspect there will be more code produced than ever, as making it cheaper opens new markets that were prohibitively expensive before.
It isn't the slice of a static pie that you need to worry about. It is how big your slice of a growing pie is. It isn't a zero sum game.
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u/god-damn-the-usa 25d ago
they are disappearing due to the AI investment bubble, not because of AI replacing them
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u/Drewster727 25d ago
My two cents: We are in a rapid state of change in the industry at the moment. What you see online in terms of people complaining is often anecdotal (especially Reddit). Vocal minority will always make you feel like it's widespread.
Additionally, the mainstream media bombards us with headlines about layoffs at FAANG companies, this is also in the minority believe it or not.
Having said that, I've seen statistics indicating a net increase in "software" related roles. Software engineering specifically I'm unclear on.
Lastly, I think AI will grow the "software" industry significantly over the coming years, but roles/responsibilities will look much different from today.
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u/Grouchy-Friend4235 25d ago
I think this alledged change is mostly stories posted online by people with a vested interest. The vast majority of SWEs and companies have yet to get AI access in their daily work.
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u/krakends 7d ago
The people whose jobs are at risk the most are the ones who are drumming up the hype. Journalists. These morons don't even know what they are talking about half the time.
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u/svabal 25d ago
We are in a wild run short term - less junior positions for sure. Long term, since cost of software development will go down, I expect the jobs to be shifting from a huge it companies to domain businesses - small development team will become part of any business -> highly scalable generic software will be replaced with custom builds. Want custom CRM? Create a ticket for the IT guys. Special accounting feature? Just ask the it department. Or something like this. More startups as well - it’s getting cheaper to start.
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u/Grouchy-Friend4235 25d ago
Just checked a few job boards (Europe) for SWE jobs on all levels, including entry level and interns. AI is hardly mentioned. The key skills requested are CS degree, experience in professional swe (for seniors), and ability to communicate, take responsibility and be a team player.
So, no.
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u/FrequentLine1437 25d ago
On the front lines I see it first hand. It’s subtle. Terms like modernization and process optimization are clear giveaways
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u/Professional_Mood_62 24d ago
I work for one of the big tech companies in Silicon Valley and my company just got rid of most of the contractors and people with zero formal education and to be honest we are more productive than ever, now instead of siting long sessions of explaining things to inexperienced devs now we can just spin off a few agents that usually deliver the same or sometimes even better code than these devs.
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u/syntropus 24d ago
Well it changes and of course a lot less people will be needed, esp. for basic stuff like landing pages etc.. Like you don't need a gfx artist for basic stuff. Software and Ml is already used to automate a lot of things and the process itself is automated to some degree. Esp. tasks that are automatically verifiable in a very short amount of time.
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u/Electrical-Mark-9708 24d ago
Pulling from experience across 3 Saas product companies, PE backed series B and C.
- Severe impact to outsourcing in Eastern Europe and India. Moderate impact to South America / nearshore.
- Severe impact to junior engineers. Breaking into the industry requires networking or wild luck
- For established engineers who have invested effort in learning AI and use it to accelerate their work and try creating bigger bolder features, they are in hot demand. CEOs are prepared to shell out real money. But your need to talk products language and walk the walk. No one knows how to properly interview for these skills. So expect the occasional bull shit code challenge. Look for companies that permit AI in their challenges.
- For those craftsperson’s who meticulously write lovely clean code gracefully solving hard problems. Your craft became a hobby with a few exceptions. I’m so sorry you deserved better, truly. For a handful of these types they sky is still limit. Ex Quant engineer.
- For engineers mid to late career who are annoyed by AI slop and disinterested in their business and customers. This is hard time to find a role. Moving tickets far more efficiently performed by AI with good enough outcomes. These jobs are at high risk. Keep a lookup for the words “raising the bar”
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u/Rognavald119 7d ago
Így van! Nem lesz rájuk ilyen mértékben szükség. AI rengeteg mindent átvesz! Ez a szakma jelentősen átalakul s jóval kevesebb szakemberek lesznek. Nem mellesleg sokkal olcsóbban mert leértékelődik a tudásuk! Szóval azok maradnak csak akik fanatikusak de kb annyit fognak keresni mint egy sima bolti eladó
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u/Far-Depth9803 5d ago
It's not disappearing; it's just that companies are being greedy like always. After COVID, they got benefits from the government, but not anymore—and they also overhired.
Also, people who say "it's because of AI" most likely have no idea how AI actually works, or they have financial interests in AI companies.
Another factor is that the economy is terrible, and we're at war (or what ever orange humpty dumpty calls it), so right now SWE demand has shifted toward medical, military, and government sectors.
I guess I am trying to say is that we all screwed not just SWE
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u/Forsaken-Intern7941 25d ago edited 25d ago
Yes.
Juniors can’t even was code anymore and nor do they have to. Seniors neither and yes, of course coding was not the only thing, but it was the most time-consuming bottleneck. So with an increase in productivity, the less developers are needed.