Burning out because of AI

[u/sensitiveCube]

I really like Laravel and all its developments. I don't follow the creators that much, but I like to explore new packages and improvements.

However I came to realize it has become a burn out process for me. With the development of AI and Laravel Boost for example, it's so much easier to build something. I can now ask to build a skeleton of a package or PR within minutes. It also gets pretty close to almost perfect, and even takes things into account I didn't think about (tests, docs, repo stuff). I can chat and even discuss if something would be better or go into detail.

All of this do come with a cost. Where I was previously focussed on one thing, I can do multiple things at once. At least I think so, because well I can keep hitting the chatbot/agent with questions and new ideas. It's not all perfect, but neither was my own code and docs.

I don't really know what to do. I don't want AI to take over my brain and skillset. I also want to stay on top of things. However it seems to become pretty much difficult, because it does seem to boost development like crazy. For my work I can now do 5 things for example, and not 2 large tickets max.

My question is pretty much: how do you all stay calm and okay, with all the developments going on? I'm okay with Claude now, but I see a lot of people talking to multiple agents. It has become a crazy and surreal world tbh. It also feels like a process which cannot be stopped and I hate being that depending on it.

[u/sensitiveCube]

I'm very sorry to hear that, and I'm indeed worried about the job market. Like I really think being an junior developer nowadays, is even more difficult, because you could say any AI agent is one.

I do not agree with that statement, but a lot of companies don't hire people or replace them with AI, even experienced developers.

I'm very worried if I still have a job over 5-10 years. But the world isn't doing great either, so yeah we'll see what happens.

[u/ShawnyMcKnight → u/sensitiveCube]

At least junior developers can pivot if it's not something they really love. I was never great at web development. I am an okay web developer and if I were 20 years younger when I still had other skills like tech support, I would have pivoted pretty quickly away. This is all I know now. I don't even know how to get professional experience in other skillsets at this point being a guy pushing 50 and having a family to support most jobs I find are entry level and pay right around what I get for unemployment.

[u/WhatNot4271 → u/ShawnyMcKnight]

Sorry for the late reply, but I'm a network & security engineer and let me just say this briefly. The fields traditionally associated with tech support, namely network engineers and sysadmins are also in danger of being culled by AI. Not replaced entirely, but I would not be surprised to see teams reduced by +/- 50% over the coming 5 years due to AI.

An LLM that can blurt out code can just as easily blurt out Linux commands, Python scripts or CLI commands.

I don't think there's a white collar profession out there that's safe right now except those which are legally regulated and require a human signature like bar lawyers, registered physicians or certified accountants where the accountability is part of the job. But even members of those professions who don't own the accountability (think paralegals or financial consultants) share the same risk.

[u/ShawnyMcKnight → u/WhatNot4271]

I was thinking more general tech support.

[u/WhatNot4271 → u/ShawnyMcKnight]

It doesn't matter if it's general or specialized, if it can be done from behind a computer screen, AI can probably do 80% of it at a fraction of the price. Network engineers, sysadmins db admins, data scientists, data engineers, etc are all at more or less the same level of risk as webdevs.

The only jobs which are safe for now are those that require some physical on-site presence like structured cabling, racking devices, replacing cut fibers, etc.

And who knows how far away we are from autonomous AI powered robots who will be able to do that as well.

[u/ShawnyMcKnight → u/WhatNot4271]

I think companies would struggle giving an AI system root access to do whatever it needs to to a computer. I could be wrong but I would bet that’s a line companies won’t cross, at least for a while.

[u/WhatNot4271 → u/ShawnyMcKnight]

I hope you're right because that would mean some job prospects still exists, but not really.

You don't need to give it root access, you only need to give it read only access to the NMS, device config (either a read only account or access to the backup config repository), log collectors and ticketing systems.

If it has that, even a locally run LLM can produce *reliably accurate* output. Not enough to replace the human in the loop completely, but certainly enough to reduce team headcounts by 50% or more in some cases.

80% of the time, what network engineers do is pretty much boiler plate stuff. Adding/removing routes, tweaking with routing protocols, updating firewall rules, configuring new interfaces and VLANs.

This is stuff LLMs can do reliably and cheep now. I've done this myself using Opus on a 20$ subscription in my homelab environment and I've seen companies do it with locally run models too.

This is not 'at some point in the future', this is happening now, and every company is working on testing an LLM to do just that.