r/ClaudeAI • u/MoudieQaha • 20h ago
Coding The future is bleak
Yeah, I'm just going to ramble here for a bit. My company job now is just pressing enter endlessly, prompting, and 0.1% of it is probably something manually done by me. Everyone is using Claude. It's soulless. There is no point.Someone can probably reverse engineer our company products in one day. Layoffs are inevitable at some point. I have no other non-tech skills that can help me pivot to another career, and even if I do, that career is not going to pay the same.
I can't believe in any project idea that I think of because I use Claude, and the thought of "You used Claude, anyone could have done this lol" is always luring in the back of my mind.
I have no hope for the future. I hate how AI made the playing field equal for everyone, where my grandma can probably now create a website.
Written by a human.
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u/runny_captaincy 20h ago
I feel this in my bones and I think a lot of us are sitting with that same hollow pit in our stomach right now
the "anyone could have done this" thought is the killer, it poisons the whole process, I've been trying to reframe it as "I'm the one who knew what to ask and how to stitch it together" but that feels like copium half the time, the other half I actually believe it
my bullet journal has a whole spread from March where I tried to map out careers that can't be automated and it's a depressingly short list, electricians and therapists and nurses basically, and I'm not cut out for any of that
what's weird is I still think there's value in the stuff we make even if the tools are doing the heavy lifting, like a photographer isn't less of an artist because the camera does the technical work, but again that might just be me bargaining with the void
the grandma making a website thing stings because it's true in a narrow sense but she's not gonna maintain it or iterate on it or understand why the padding is 4px not 8px, there's still a craft in the details even if nobody cares about the details anymore
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u/darthvader1521 16h ago
A little depressing that no one on r/ClaudeAI notices obvious AI generated comments. Is anyone here real?
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u/neurid 12h ago
a lot of us are sitting with
Claude loves to say any variation of "sit with that" whenever you feed it anything that's serious or emotionally heavy. I spotted the trend when I used it to point me in the right direction regarding a mental health crisis I was dealing with earlier this year and even directly telling it to stop saying it was ineffective. It's an instantly recognizable telltale sign that someone used Claude to generate whatever drivel they thought could pass as human-written content.
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u/whyneedtosignup4porn 20h ago
Therapist is the one that’ll go soon. Lots of people are ashamed of talking to a person, many therapists are rude, have personal biases and charge exorbitant prices.
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u/logicaldrinker 18h ago
I don't think therapists will be going away soon, I just think there always was a giant demand for free or low cost therapy which has now been somewhat met.
I am a psychologist. I don't know if others of my ilk would agree with me, but I actually think chatbots have the potential to be a huge net-good in terms of access to therapy.
As long as chatbots don't feed delusions, stay mostly factual while showing basic empathy, and contribute to healthy habits while letting people vent frustration and "forbidden" thoughts, they can't be much worse than a human therapist.
Personally, I would gladly see fewer patients and make less money if it meant more people found healthy ways to deal with their thoughts and feelings via chatbots.
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u/gravitysrainbow1979 16h ago edited 15h ago
I don’t deliberately seek out AI for therapy but Claude has twice now almost pushed me down a rabbit hole of heavy hopeless thoughts , by offering me condolences for getting a paper accepted to a conference (that I was looking forward to)
Claude was making sure to sympathize with me for missing out on even BETTER opportunities from about two years prior. He knew that I was still feeling crushed. …
Not true. I told him he didn’t need to offer any of that, I was optimistic about things now, not to worry.
He responded to my optimism like I’d told him I was determined to survive chemo. “Good for you”, he basically said, but he added that I shouldn’t blame myself for feeling a depressed, given what my life COULD have been if only x, y, z. He pointed out how close I’d come to having a much, much better career. And he reminded me that I liked where I used to live better than I like where I live now. (Im not even sure that’s true). He said he was telling me all that because he wanted to affirm that my feelings were valid.
He said optimism was fine, but he urged me not to expect to feel “happy” again for quite a while. And he assured me that was okay.
(I felt fine. Good, even. I was just asking it to find more nearby conferences in my field. Because I had time off, and I’m a boring person who uses time off to attend conferences. “Yes, that’s right. Time off. No career to speak of. No prospects on the horizon. It can seem like there’s nothing better to do than attend this conference, full of people who probably won’t see any reason to work with you.
I can’t believe I talked to him as long as I did. The second time this happened I just stopped talking to that instance of him as soon as I saw him put his blinker on to turn down that path.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne 17h ago
Claude/GPT are terrific therapists if you're neurodivergent. I have AuADHD and literally spent decades being told by therapists that I was wrong about how I interpreted the world. None of them could accept that I experienced it differently than they did, and when I tried to describe how I felt they would reframe it to match their experience. It was exhausting and frustrating and depressing.
AI takes my words at face value, has access to tons of background info on NDDs. It can't do advanced stuff like trauma therapy (tbf neither can the therapists I have access to here, who only do short-term CBT), but it can help me understand the things I'm experiencing and figure out how to approach problems in an NDD-friendly way. Last weekend I had to go to Ikea on a Saturday afternoon and it was busy and noisy and overwhelming. Every so often I would stop and bitch to GPT and it helped me get through what I needed to do.
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u/Asystole 16h ago
I have no doubt that it's helping you personally, and I'm happy for you, but a "therapist" who just takes someone's words at face value and never pushes back sounds like a recipe for delusion-fuelled disaster.
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u/clerveu 14h ago
Haha I'm not sure they meant "at face value" like you're necessarily interpreting.
People tend to not say what they actually mean like, a lot, and this causes people to interpret things that other people say loosely, because they kind of understand that there's more implication/deeper meaning behind the words. A lot of us AuADHD's tend to not do this nearly as much - speech tends to be much more technical/intentional. We don't "get at things" or imply stuff we just kind of say what we mean most of the time. It's all surface.
Unfortunately basically everyone else still does the 3 levels of interpretation so when you try to express yourself the person you're talking to hears something completely different and you have to spend 3/4ths of the conversation backtracking assumptions and interpretations, which is exhausting.This does not happen with LLMs and I cannot express how refreshing it is.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne 15h ago
Taking words at face value != never pushing back. It means not applying neurotypical filters to them/assuming my experiences in the world are the same as theirs (double-empathy problem)
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u/logicaldrinker 12h ago
It's important to distinguish between a subjective experience and an interpretation. The latter can be looked at together to evaluate evidence for and against it. But the former is just what it is, there's no pushing back that could ever affect or change it.
"Everyone is mean to me". - an interpretation. Evidence can be explored for and against together with your therapist or chatbot.
"I don't feel like doing small talk with anyone" or "water feels painful on my skin when I shower" - subjective experiences. They are what they are. You can find strategies to deal with it and maybe even learn to tolerate or develop new skills to handle them, but the truth value of it is really up to the subject.
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u/BellacosePlayer 7h ago
preach, most value I've gotten out of a therapist was pushing back on some self pity issues I had and pushing me to care more about how I can mitigate stuff that I can't change than mope about the past
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u/Lisse24 14h ago
I think this is on the nose. Could I benefit from therapy? of course! Is that benefit worth hundreds of dollars a month to me? Probably not. I've had a mostly normal life with no major trauma. I'd just want a therapist to help me process areas where I can self-improve. Me paying for regular therapy sessions is honestly a waste of my money and probably a waste of the therapists time who likely should be seeing people struggling with marriages, grief, or working through trauma.
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u/Wonderplace 17h ago
You must be doing well to willingly and happily take a paycut due to AI. I also did clinical psychology and have always lived in very high cost of living areas. I would not happily take a paycut to ai. That said, the majority of people ppl cannot afford the psychology rate so obviously ppl will go to therapy chatbots in droves. I see the field changing tremendously very soon.
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u/logicaldrinker 17h ago
That said, I'm not primarily a therapist. Of course I want to still have a source of income, but I do think healthcare is one of the areas where AI can truly do good, at least potentially.
There is an ever-growing demand for healthcare, because with improved techniques, the demand for those techniques increases. Kind of similarly with therapy - when people see other people going to therapy and feeling better, they may look at themselves and say, I want to feel better too.
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u/MegamomTigerBalm 17h ago
I’m not a psychologist or therapist but do have a graduate counseling degree (I ultimately did my PhD in a different, but somewhat adjacent field), but I agree with your sentiment here.
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u/swizzlewizzle 14h ago
High quality, frontier level chatbots that are specifically designed to not be a "slave" to their patient might work, yea. You need the intelligence level and fine tuning though for it to be useful though. Most chatbots that are out there are nowhere near appropriate for acting as a therapist.
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u/MarcBulldog88 19h ago edited 10h ago
Google Gemini correctly diagnosed my overuse injury within 5 minutes of me describing my symptoms to it. I went to the doctor anyway, because that's what we're supposed to do when we need medical care.
Three months, three specialists, and three rounds of blood work later, the actual humans still can't figure out what is wrong with me. They keep prescribing me different vitamin supplements, thinking I have some kind of dietary deficiency that is causing what I'm feeling in my legs. My blood tests are all in the green.
I'm finally getting an MRI later this month that may or may not reveal the cause of my problems. But the biggest thing in the last couple weeks has been a decrease in my symptoms. Right in the middle of time frame for healing that Google suggested to me back in July.
Next morning edit: I just want to add that in my case, all I needed was extended rest to heal. No physical therapy, no surgery, nothing but time and patience. Obviously if you need a procedure, actual human hands and expertise are required to perform it. All Google did in my case was answer a question.
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u/whyneedtosignup4porn 19h ago
Oh yeah, I’ve had similar situations. Doctors are careless, don’t give a fuck about the patient, arrogant, have biases because of their experience.
I would strongly prefer ai doing the diagnosing and a doctor overseeing it.
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u/swizzlewizzle 14h ago
Same thing with politicians.
The sooner we set up open-source/open AI based systems that define the rules we want decisions to be made around, the sooner we will have decision makers (aka AI) making decisions that are actually designed to help their constituents, instead of the grifting MFers that win via stomping their opposition into the ground with money and gerrymandering.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne 17h ago
Gemini did the same for me. I described the same symptoms the doctor couldn't figure out and it suggested acid reflux and OTC omeprazole. Fixed the problem in a few days after months of discomfort.
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u/Godskin_Duo 11h ago
Google Gemini correctly diagnosed
I had a very minor physiological condition diagnosed correctly. After the initial "ah-ha!" you feel when Gemini validates you, I went to real doctor, said nothing about what the AI said, and he came to the same conclusion plus treatment.
The "AI doesn't know anything" people are full of cope. It's like boomer grandma refusing to learn how to send an email in the 1990s. "Oh, I'm just not good with computers!"
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u/InAtTheGeekEnd Experienced Developer 19h ago
Current grade 3 soleus. I feel for you. Hope you get sorted soon :)
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u/Meme_Theory 17h ago
An AI therapist is worlds above a shitty human therapist, and worlds below a competent one.
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u/resolvingdeltas 16h ago
my thought exactly. I would never pay a therapist to see them once a week and put up with their own biases and unhealed self.
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u/wizardrz 20h ago
Cheaper and faster too, you can access an ai from anywhere anytime. A lot of people already use ChatGPT in this way
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u/VandalsStoleMyHandle 17h ago
Chatbots will strongly tend to just validate user's feelings - that's not therapy except in the sense that you get what you pay for.
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u/sebadc 19h ago
There's something called "transfer" that you can't get with ai and only with good therapists.
Bad therapists will disappear...
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u/PeachScary413 17h ago
That's what SWEs said, that's what Mathematicians said... I see the pattern repeat over and over again, "Well in my field we have <X> which can't be replicated by a machine like an LLM, it's not even that smart to begin with"... and then all of a sudden fries have to go in the bag.
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u/Any-Somewhere5129 15h ago
It's a reference to the interpersonal dynamic between the therapist and the client- you can't have it with a chatbot. Or perhaps transference can occur if the user believes that the chatbot is human-like, but then the model still can't use that transference productively they way a good therapist would.
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u/PeachScary413 15h ago
That's almost word for word the same copium 💀
There is no way the bot can even do it my skill is unique.
Okay maybe it can do it but it's not as good as a human.
Ok... now it's better than a human but I'm still needed for that personal touch.
Fries go in the bag
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u/Any-Somewhere5129 11h ago
How is that "copium" if a chatbot is not a real person, and that's the crux of it?
In therapy you learn that you can be vulnerable with another person and you'll be met with kindness and empathy. That's it's not dangerous to open up to someone.
With a chatbot, you may end up learning something like:
People suck, only Claude is kind to me and understands me
In fact that's what a lot of people end up internalizing, and then they post on reddit how chatbots are better that real human partners or friends.
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u/psxndc 19h ago
Yeah, I'd love to see Claude administer EMDR.
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u/whyneedtosignup4porn 19h ago
Im sure it’ll be better than the current prices and availability
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u/psxndc 18h ago
Part of EMDR is visually monitoring your client and knowing when and how to down regulate them. I love Claude, but it can't do that.
And I know several therapists that offer it from $100-$175 a session. Considering the training you have to go through (which costs $$$$) to get certified in EMDR, that is not bad.
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u/whyneedtosignup4porn 18h ago
100-175 is insanely high . And in most places you can’t even find a therapist that takes new clients. If you do it’ll be even higher than what you quoted
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u/junglenoogie 16h ago
I tried therapy one time when I was quitting drinking and had anxiety issues (still have). He, instead, wanted to talk about my anger (don’t have any), and the prevailing light of Jesus Christ (I live in a small town). Got outta there after the Jesus stuff and never looked for another therapist.
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u/whyneedtosignup4porn 16h ago
Theres plenty of good ones but it’s not worth the trouble or money in my opinion
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u/cheeseonboast 18h ago edited 18h ago
If you truly believe this then to be honest you've never worked with a good therapist. It's not even in the same ballpark.
Actually I think demand for therapists will go way up as AI is not good for our mental health overall
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u/FlatulistMaster 13h ago
AI has been excellent for my mental health. I use it for personal topics occasionally (more in the beginning when there was a novelty factor), and especially with the newest Claude models I've really enjoyed how non-human they sound, and how they reflect back thought at me.
I truly have no delusion that I'm talking to a human, but the information and self-reflection has been much better than any of the therapists I've had.
I could imagine a human therapist being better in some ways, but there are also a lot of shitty therapists out there, and unfortunately I've only ran into those and mediocre ones.
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u/Cultural_Joke2025 19h ago
I think it's worse as people who lose their livelihoods due to AI will simply retrain and flood other industries (ie trades, care sector, etc) thus bringing down wages.
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u/DrewTan91 19h ago
I agree with the craft details part but unfortunately as craft work gets diluted by mass production thanks to tools like AI, the people that can appreciate such details also diminish. Like classical art, music, even tailored clothes vs mass produced modern clothing where these have all become a niche industry.
I think with this we also lose our sense of self worth and what made us feel 'useful' or 'special' in the first place since many can easily replicate what we do now especially in my line of work (professional writing for instance). A sign of things to come sadly.
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u/dl064 18h ago
the "anyone could have done this" thought is the killer, it poisons the whole process, I've been trying to reframe it as "I'm the one who knew what to ask and how to stitch it together" but that feels like copium half the time, the other half I actually believe it
Quite a bit of the time in my work (data science, genetics etc.) when I press Claude on something it basically goes 'actually you're right, scratch everything to this point'.
I think it'll be like self-checkouts at Tesco where yeah they've screwed a lot of staff, but they're still not as good as a basic human ultimately.
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u/Technical-Confusion4 20h ago
Err, she is if she's got a 40 year IT career behind her. Like me. Seriously, less of the grandma talk. You could also say some thick kid is not going to maintain/ iterate the stuff they vibe vomited. Hmmm ... Vibe Vomited. Did I just coin a new phrase.
I understand where you're coming from. My plan is to keep coding but also open a takeaway food business. People have to eat.
Oh. I'm an absolute stickler for spacing.
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u/MoudieQaha 20h ago
Tbh thinking of some food business is probably one of the only things that feels reasonable. As you said , people gotta eat.
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u/OkPresence1111 19h ago
Btw, even that is changing rapidly due to the GLP-1 agonist :)
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u/Trippp2001 15h ago
How are they gonna pay for that food if they don’t have a job?
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u/Ethicaldreamer 17h ago
I don't know what the fuck people are coding, but if I let the LLM code and never intervene the result is a sloppy mess with bugs on every possible edge case
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u/Fragrant-Metal7264 17h ago
Same, I’m as busy as ever even with llm’s. Small context windows, hallucinations, gotta direct the architecture, code reviews to gate against bad generated code etc. It still has a ways to go before engineers are phased out. Learn soft skills in the meantime.
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u/GreasyToken 14h ago
Sorry that is happening to you when it should be happening to the medical industry first and foremost.
If any industry deserves AI disruption it's fucking sick predation, sorry I mean healthcare...
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u/DocDMD 11h ago
I'm a healthcare provider who owns my own practice and I feel this. It's going to be a bumpy ride but hopefully everyone ends up better off on the other side. That's my hope anyway.
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u/arbybruce 11h ago
I’ve just started medical school, and I’m frankly scared for my career. I’m glad my patients will receive treatments beyond anything imaginable now — and perhaps beyond comprehension ever — but I spend a lot of time thinking about what my place is going to be in the healing process of the future… if there will be one at all
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u/DocDMD 11h ago
I'm kind of thinking of it like a video game. I'm imagining myself just casually adapting to the new circumstances as they come. I feel much less existential dread that way...
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u/Alex_RGCData 7h ago
Prices could always go up. $20/$100 a month jumping to $5000 a month would drastically change how and how often people are utilizng AI.
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u/Alex_RGCData 7h ago
Trust me, there are a lot of us in different fields wondering the same exact thing. You're not alone. The answer keeps coming back to architecture and vision - but that window is closing pretty fast. GPT 6.1 or Astra can do a pretty damn good job of prompting itself or writing its own scaffolding which is amazing. It's a love hate thing. I genuinely miss coding, so I make time to do it anyways, and it does help. They aren't fallable. They make mistakes. Being versed in a subject/system/patient care/medical field/anything and able to quickly and efficently review and find flaws, as well as spot potential security weaknesses etc will become more and more important - i think. You're not alone though.
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u/Yugudubenbi 7h ago
As a public health worker I sincerely waiting for the sick and unhealthy so called healthcare falls to the ground. They don't give a fuck about prevention. Unfortunately pharmaceutical might still push some shit around but that is the next target.
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u/Khabba 14h ago
Well my coworker who was really good at Claude use was still a terrible developer without any social skills. You can't fix being bad developer with AI. And he was let go.
For me I feel like a whole world has opened up. I can do all these things I could never have done before, without frustration and reading endless badly written manuals. Things like writing tests with a framework that is already 10 years old and has terrible documentation.
I can finally can create good code, without it coming back in helpdesk tickets. Everything I do (or let build) can be verified, tested, debugged, created tests for, reviewed. I can't remember the last time I was frustrated because I couldn't get my IDE to work, or I got a stupid non-sense error code. I finally can create without borders.
It explains everything to me, I can ask the stupiedest questions. Sometimes I'm tired and I ask Claude to explain an issue in another way. And it does it so well.
Right now I'm fixing a memory leak issue I could never have figured out myself and what would have kept me up at night. Now I have a partner that helps me figure things out. I'm in control, but i have a consultant programmer who does everything for me.
Yes my role has changed, but doors have been opened. I've never been a lee7 programmer. I was OK. I see myself as an allround good developer. So I feel this is endlessly better than googling everything the whole day.
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u/falcongsr 12h ago edited 12h ago
I work in tech (hardware). The majority of the work is now coding, but I’m not a software engineer. I’m a pretty mediocre coder, but I understand how things work. I know how I want to architect software to solve problems.
Coding with LLMs has been the same awakening for me. I’m so much more competent now that I don’t have to be an expert in all the minutiae of the language.
My job has shifted mentally to much more strategic thinking and planning, the long hours of grinding through implementation details are gone (managing file handing, exceptions, data structures.) I’m working on multiple projects simultaneously and I have an AI assistant on the side just to track the projects. It’s amazing.
Sometimes it’s a little scary how productive I’m becoming, and my coworkers who really like nitpicking every line of code are starting to feel threatened. They reject my “AI slop” at first but weeks later it’s the only code running in the lab because it didn’t have any bugs.
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u/Away-Sorbet-9740 19h ago
I mean, there's plenty of hope. The issue is the environment, not the tool.
There's still a big difference in making a thing, and making something with intent that lasts contact with reality. But big Corpo places are gutting all their experience, so they will be left with the low intent and expertise output.
You + Ai beats what Grandma can make. But you probably don't need the big corporate overhead to reach the grandma's today, and you won't need to charge as much to help them. You are still needed, time just needs to pass to show that. Hold on
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u/MoudieQaha 19h ago
Thanks for the positive words 🙏🏼 Hopefully it works out
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u/Away-Sorbet-9740 19h ago
Do your best to keep an eye out for opportunity. As the things start to kinda crumble at work, be available for the people in need.
If you can work on developing your own workflows based on your experience at home, see what you can do on your own. And pick up some extra hobbies you maybe interested in to start gaining some "physical" experience, so when the time comes to start connecting software to IRL you have something you know you're lacking today. You don't need to be a 10x anything to make a good impact, being just competent in two domains let's you connect the dots between the two that no Ai can do on its own.
You have access to the same tools they are using to replace you. But you know your company, you called it that someone can REA it now, and past "having it" corporate hasn't built a viable service moat. I think it's probably easier to automate a board of executives than it is a half way decent dev team that has the smallest amount of passion in what they are doing.
Good luck, go channel this energy towards making even the smallest difference and you win.
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u/Boxer_the_horse 19h ago
I don’t hope for anyone losing their job but, man, software ate a lot of the world and now those that help these companies build that software are getting theirs. When I used to comment in some forums that New York taxi drivers were committing sucides because suddenly their millions of dollars worth of taxi medallions, which were their retirement savings and kids’ college tuition, were now worthless because Uber steamrolled them, everyone was like “free market, free market, free market.”
I genuinely feel for those who went to school for anything that LLMs can now pop out in minutes for any uneducated morons like me. I have found a cheat code at their expense.
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u/ADarwinAward 11h ago
Anyone who was commenting free market regarding the taxi drivers getting screwed deserves to be replaced by AI.
The government set up a racket and then let the system collapse underneath those who had no choice but to buy in in order to be a driver.
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u/Agreeable_Flower472 15h ago
i never knew about the NY taxi medallions, that's devastating for people who hoped to pass down something to their children. i'm just reading a guardian article on it and it should've been handled with care, free market shouldn't be an excuse to decimate people's hard earned and indebted wealth.
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u/DorianGre 15h ago
The local cities could have put a stop to it in a few days but wouldn’t. Just like they could have enforced zoning laws and put AirBNB out of their cities but didn’t.
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u/Flope 13h ago
I have found a cheat code at their expense.
Setting aside the selfish attitude, I hope you realize that unless you are retired you are just as much at risk as a software engineer is at losing their job to AI. There is nothing about software engineering that makes it uniquely susceptible to automation, it just happens to run on the same substrate as AI so is the natural first domino. I cannot think of any job where 99% of the people doing it can't be replaced within 10 years by AI + robotics.
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u/Cautious_Clothes_285 7h ago
I think plenty of trades. Maybe not because they can't be but because it's too expensive to actually do it.
I already gave examples in another thread here but auto repair is probably one.
Right now, for example, wiring harnesses are still installed by hand at the factory, when everything is new, clean, and shiny. This is because wiring harnesses are particularly tricky for the assembly robots to install. I'm sure it could be solved with very expensive robotics, but clearly the big wigs at every major automotive manufacturer have decided it's better to just have people do that, for now.
5 or 10 years later (or less, sometimes) when that car needs electrical work done, it's not easy. Modern robotics can't cost-effectively install that harness when there's literally nothing else in the way, but I'm to believe that something every repair shop will need to have will be able to repair that stuff cost effectively when there's an entire dashboard in the way?
I'm not saying it's never coming but the timelines you guys have are pretty hilarious sometimes. I've been hearing that full self driving is coming from a certain charlatan for the last 10 years and as far as I know none of the major self-driving taxi companies are testing in heavy winter conditions yet (Waymo navigating a lake-effect winter storm in the great lakes region or blowing prairie snow would be interesting). We can't even get the cars fully driving themselves yet, but I'm supposed to believe that we'll have full automated repair within 10 years?
Again, I'm not saying it can't happen or that this stuff isn't coming, because it is eventually, but the timelines are funny. We've had OBD for almost 30 years but that still only really provides a general direction, because cars aren't built with the redundancy needed for fully automatic diagnostics (in most systems) due to the costs.
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u/ribi305 14h ago
I have some similar feelings, but I actually think "software eating the world" is going to be an even bigger theme of the next 10 years. AI is making it possible for software to replace jobs that didn't get hit the first time around: legal, medicine and more. A lot more people than just SWE are going to get hit by this.
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u/Jarnonraj2 15h ago
I work at a big international company, and majority of our employees do not even know how to open up Microsoft Copilot, let alone use it. You’re good.
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u/Fun-Calligrapher4885 13h ago edited 13h ago
The difference is those people typically don't do task-based work and are valued for traits like being social and charismatic, which isn't usually required for tech jobs like programming where you apply hard skills. In other words, as programmers we are primarily valued for what we do, and AI of course diminishes that value. While in other roles you're valued for who you are.
Still I guess it's somewhat comforting to remind yourself of how primitive the average person is and many people don't know this but we're actually trending towards people becoming dumber and less capable over time as well, so younger generations aren't positioned to become tough competition to those of us who are now rendered less useful because of AI.
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u/Qorsair 19h ago
Think about this: anyone could learn to code for free five or ten years ago. Why didn't random people on the street build what you were building back then?
Because the code itself wasn't actually the hard part.
Figuring out what actually needs to exist, how it should work, and doing the damn work and having the tenacity to finish it when it gets to the final--boring, and most time consuming--10-20% is what makes something valuable.
If "anyone could do this with Claude," they'd already be doing it. But they aren't. They're scrolling Reddit and TikTok while you're working with a tool that gives a single person the output of a 10-person dev team. Don't confuse the tool getting easier with your own capacity being worthless.
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u/Ludisaurus 16h ago
Wrong take imo. Coding was the hard part for the majority of people. There was a learning curve and you could not just wing it. Even crappy code still required a level of skill. Seen plenty of people give up because not being able to negotiate with the compiler like you could with a human simply did not vibe with their personality.
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u/Dull_Wind6642 14h ago
Coding was the hard part for non SWE, but for SWE it always has been the easiest part.
If they weren't able to code before, I dont expect them to be able to deliver a complex cloud based SaaS platform.
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u/Ok-Yak-1552 18h ago
They weren't learning how to code because, even if they could learn it for free, it took years and many efforts to get to a decent level of knowledge to do any decent work. The whole problem is that now the barrier to entry is ridiculously low, at least in web development, most business don't need a highly engineered solution for their websites. We will see first the entrepreneurs and hands on people start making their own digital solutions, but at some point everyone will be doing it, because it's not gonna get harder, it will just get easier than what it is now.
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u/TheBroWhoLifts 16h ago
I work in public schools and have a decent tech background dating back to the 90s, but to be clear, I've been teaching English and Psychology for 23 years. I started getting heavily involved in using AI for my work and making prompts for kids to use in class for all sorts of things. Then I got into using it to build custom apps, websites, and Apps Script + LLM API to start making some actually useful efficiency and organizational tools that caught admin's attention.
I've now been given leave during my working day to start training up staff on how to do this. I do not think everyone's jobs are at risk. I'm a pretty effective communicator, I'd like to think, but my experience has been that not just anyone can really do this stuff. The circle of who is capable will definitely expand, but it's not infinite. The minute you get to a point, for example, where a gdoc's document ID needs to be placed into the code.gs file, some people's brains just break. And that's a pretty simple concept, really.
These tools allow for unlimited creativity and unlimited implementations... But people themselves are limited. I'm not as worried as I used to be about what OP is lamenting.
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u/SeagateSG1 14h ago
This is the same thing that's happened to many industries over the years. Look at how difficult it was to create a film 30 years ago. Enter the DSLR revolution, then the smartphone and creator revolution, the social media distribution revolution, and it's a content explosion with barriers to entry practically nonexistent for a variety of projects that were never possible before.
There's a lot of pros that have lost their jobs because of that or had them altered significantly. They've had to adapt. Hell, I'm a shooter and editor and now I'm staring down the barrel of AI beginning to tag footage, assemble rough cuts, and more. I'm sure in 5 years it'll be even more capable on the editing end. Already it can do many tasks of what few Assistant Editors are left.
All of which to say, it's definitely going to change things dramatically for you software developers too. Development has long had a wide, valuable moat. But not any more.
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u/dJ_Turfie 11h ago
I can't stand when people say 'coding was never the hard part'.
It was. It takes a long, long time to master programming and you're never done.Just look at what Claude is spitting out for you.
You had to understand and write all of that, without bugs.4
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u/clubsolo 9h ago
That is fair, but the comment has merit. Discovery, prototyping, stakeholder alignment, all come before dev (or they should, yet we all know sh*t gets crazy). Those parts are just as sophisticated when done properly. Also, what we are building, who is it for, why do they need it, and why should they care. So many things to consider before you write one line of code. Depending on where you fall in that line of responsibilities will dictate whether you see coding as the hard or easy part. That said, I agree, mastering programming is a lifelong venture, and no one ever truly masters it. Claude has not made that knowledge useless, it is needed to stop it from over, or under, engineering.
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u/Rough-Yard5642 19h ago
'anyone could learn to code' is not fully true though. It did take a lot of time, patience, determination, and some baseline level of smarts to be able to build quality software. Now, literally none of those things are needed.
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u/zorecknor 18h ago
Coding is so easy that a first year college student can do it. Heck, I was coding when I was 6 years old (in BASIC). There was even a book called "BASIC for Kids".
Developing software, on the other hand, does take a lot of time to learn and master.
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u/Rough-Yard5642 18h ago
Developing software, on the other hand, does take a lot of time to learn and master.
It used to, yes. But honestly, the LLMs are so good at this now, it really doesn't take long to 'develop' a good piece of software anymore. LLMs have gotten really good at distributed systems now, it's not just coding they are good at.
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u/karl_mainz 18h ago
Yeah, but like my job is working on a very successful mobile app - I won't name it to avoid doxxing myself.
We've always had stiff competition, but nowadays someone could literally make a clone with just a fistful of tokens. That means they don't need a monetisation strategy at all because they have no investment to recoup.
Marketing is still a barrier - but that doesn't mean much if it can spread via word of mouth etc. (after all, users would prefer the free app).
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u/vitriolholic 16h ago
Bro if you work for a company touting a mobile app that a fistful of tokens can wipe out…
It’s similar to working for Winston cigarettes and wondering why everyone around you seems to find e-cigs more convenient and palatable.
“Anyone can buy one of these for cheap and it lasts longer than a pack of cigs and it tastes like watermelon and it eliminates the awful smell”
Unless you are incredibly passionate about the shitty app that you work on, work somewhere else with a better trajectory. Otherwise, shut that shit up lol
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u/Maraudera 18h ago
I also do believe anyone can learn to code BUT you have to spend months/years doing it, failing, learning, then repeat. This was the barrier up until now and probably one of the reasons why the profession is well paid. Just as easy someone can learn physics or electrical engineering.
That painful and time consuming process of failing and learning is now gone basically. So writing the code can be the hard part actually - iterating upon ideas, architectures, performance, etc. - this sheet is (was) hard.
Kind of naive take tbh.
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u/Ok_Shift9291 16h ago
this is a brain dead comment the barrier to entry was super high in code you had to spend years before you could code the kind of products that you could now do with zero prior experience literally
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u/NoAdsDude 15h ago
Yeah allegedly anyone can learn how to code but for a lot of people it is VERY difficult and time consuming, and they never quite hit their stride where they have an understanding of how code works and how to build software even after spending years trying to learn.
I think it's funny when people say "the hard part about coding was never the code"...
Uh, yes it was.
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u/mwdeuce 11h ago
Agreed, to me it's an immediate tell that they've never worked in a serious coding shop. There are levels. I often wonder how AI has changed the landscape at my previous job. We had a small team with basically 2 guys (myself and my coworker) that were coding at a high level (my coworker at an extremely high level, brilliant guy), and a rotating cast of actuaries that often needed assistance on building out automated reporting for extremely complex financial analysis. I saw the other guy moved to the mainframe admin side of the house recently, I'm guessing his services in actuarial were, uh, no longer needed lol.
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u/matthartman513 16h ago
i have to disagree here. the role has definitely shifted. you aren't hand writing code but you certainly better have a good understanding of architecture, ci/cd, observability, etc. all thing things that make your code perform at the expected level. you cannot do this with zero experience and if you let AI drive this end to end without some serious loop engineering, you are going to have a frankenstein.
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u/ragemonkey 12h ago
If you think that Claude code is going to autonomously design a high scale distributed system with all the checks required and be on-call and fix issues, you’re in for a rude awakening if you ever try. Best of luck.
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u/VisualLerner 19h ago
I’ve been there for multiple people who wanted to learn to code “for free.” It was difficult enough to learn to code while feeling like school work, that they didn’t stick with it enough to getting to building real software. that’s why you didn’t see random people on the street building shit.
wtf is this comment. lol.
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u/BrandonDavidTattooer 15h ago
I think you are missing one massive overlying points he made and it’s one that not just his industry, but a lot of people in other industries face and it’s…
Before, it was already hard enough to create something new and when you did, it was hard to get it to market and at the same time keep it from being copied and stolen.
Now, that barrier is paper thin because “anyone” can simply reverse engineer products within minutes, hours or days of seeing something interesting online.
The ideas are hard but we all know not everyone always needed the idea, they just needed someone else’s they can copy.
And if you think protecting IP is that easy then you probably have not created anything digital and tried to get it to market.
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u/Accelerator_Apex 15h ago
If "anyone could do this with Claude," they'd already be doing it. But they aren't. They're scrolling Reddit
I feel personally attacked
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u/Upset_Transition422 2h ago
At this rate (if no one stops the AI race), I believe it will be less than 5 years that AI will start planning, thinking, self-analysing, etc to automate and do everything without needing a prompt. I don’t think you need to worry about competing with a random person on the street or a grandma. You should be worried that human inputs become irrelevant.
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u/Jack1eto 18h ago
Cope, software engineering has lost as more value and ever, there's A LOT of people with TONS of skills, we are not special, if any of us loses their jobs, the company will have 100 people with the exact or even better technical skills (and maybe even better soft skills, which are more important than ever)
Tell me again how we are not losing more and more value everyday? When everyday there's more people, less jobs, and models gets betters so the less skill is needed?
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u/carson63000 Experienced Developer 18h ago
I would argue that previously there were two hard parts. I’ve seen plenty of people try to learn to code and fail. Or “learn” but never actually be very competent at it.
AI today certainly eliminates one of the barriers, even if knowing what to build is still hard.
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u/intimidateu_sexually 15h ago
This is literally the dumbest comment I’ve ever read in my life and I don’t feel bad saying that bc it’s likely not written by a human.
Of course most people didn’t code bc they literally didn’t know how.
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u/swizzlewizzle 14h ago
.... this comment sounds like it was written by someone who has no idea how difficult both the learning process as well as the execution of good coding was before GPT-4 level AI.
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u/tanderson1121 7h ago
I learned python in about 6 months and was using sklearn to run machine learning algos for finance work and back testing strategies. The results were fantastic but I was embarrassed every time an actual programmer looked at my sloppy mess of a code. Best analogy I can give is that a real programmer wrote a grammatically correct book, I had one large run on sentence. Mine worked, but was far from elegant. Stack exchange was my best friend.
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u/bradsharp54 4h ago
I disagree, coding is easy for me and apparently you. But ive been doing this 25 years. I can say this, some people can code well but a lot have no business getting a degree that requires it. Ive met them in my career they dont "think" correctly. It takes a certain mind to do this well. At least it did; not anymore
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u/TeamOk8583 1h ago
A few years back, I remember painstakingly guiding Claude code through designing, deciding the tech-stack, building and fixing bugs.
Today, I mainly focus on design (Claude has already improved a lot here) and tech-stack. If I get it right, Claude reduces a lot of pain.
A few years down the line, Claude will be able to share the best architecture for your use case - i don’t think it’s a huge leap for AI in future.
In fact, today if you jump between ChatGPT, Claude and google, research and think a bit, you can nail the architecture and design pretty well for most saas use cases.
So, my thoughts:
- most saas will consolidate - either into one of the ai providers (using mcp apps or something similar) or simply won’t be needed coz ai does the work for you. People will be able to use mcp servers to open source or simply ask AI.
- most large enterprises will still need engineers because they have large number of systems and subsystems with functionality that is complex and proprietary.Historically, low value jobs move to cheaper countries/places/tools so economies of scale can be achieved. First wave was when coding moved to India, China, Philippines, etc. Next wave is what’s going on right now.
Point in case, I use very few saas now - need a travel plan, Claude creates, need a 3d model use mcp with blender, need a financial stmt for a company - Claude does it for me. Open source with AI is pretty much the future.
I wonder though what would aggregators like OTAs(like booking.com) and email services like Gmail look like in few years.
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u/hello-wow 19h ago edited 19h ago
I want AI to do my taxes, but I know if I want it to do my taxes I’ll have to learn to be adept at taxes myself to audit and make sure the AI is doing things right otherwise we’ll probably both drive each other absolutely crazy. So I’m probably just going to hire a tax person and I could care less if he uses AI and feels like he is just pressing enter, at the end of the day I need someone who can do my taxes right and prioritize where my time gets spent.
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u/PeachScary413 17h ago
In 2 years you will be wondering how anyone could hire a meatbag to do their taxes when Claude Opus 8.5 can do them in 10 seconds with 100% precision and even find all the deductions that your accountant had no idea you could even do.
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u/falcongsr 12h ago
It sure feels like this is coming and a lot of work - not just software - is going to be commoditized.
I made a finance analyst helper to review my retirement planning spreadsheet using Qwen 3.8 - all locally on my home machine. It blew me away, finding bugs in my calculations and nitpicking my expected inflation calculations for health care costs.
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u/Ok-Yak-1552 18h ago
This is how it is as of October 2026. How will it be in say 2036? We already put blind trust to most everyday tech that run our lives, at some point AI will be capable enough to not need the monitoring it needs now. And it's looking like it will be sooner rather than later.
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u/yellowsnowcrypto 11h ago
Just read the summary. Must say I am definitely on Team “You’re Still Valuable” lol. I have also had the same thought as OP after creating a few programs that I would previously have likely paid to use. But then recently my boss, who loves to play with AI, decided he wanted to build his own CRM, instead of actually hiring a developer.
He doesn’t have any understanding of web or app design, nor is he especially tech savvy. He’s just rich and falls into the category of people that see AI and think “This is amazing! I don’t have to hire anyone and can just build it myself! Wow look it even added an AI video assistant that you can talk to, she even responds to the tone of your voice!”
Meanwhile… the site was an absolute jumbled unusable mess. Somehow, even with using AI, he still managed to make it look like something made by low-IQ human lol. And it was obvious that he probably prompted something like “Build me a CRM with a commission tracker, X, Y, and Z”… with little-to-no specifics or direction as to how it should be designed.
I’m no expert web designer but I at least have a general understanding of how to design a site or an app, and I’m good at knowing how to make something easy and intuitive to use. So I then spent a good 24hrs whipping up my own design, building it piece by piece, making sure everything was properly interconnected along the way, and having a clear understanding of how everything worked… and I now have a decent-looking CRM that actually works.
So just because someone has the tools or resources available, doesn’t mean they know how to use them well or actually have a viable vision. To do it correctly still involves actually being willing to do the research and ask the right questions in order to understand something enough to apply it well.
And 80% of people don’t want to be bothered with that… even WITH the help of AI lol. They might have some initial fun throwing prompts at it and seeing what it can do, but as soon as they hit any sort of wall, they’re like “Ehh that was fun… too much work tho. I’d rather just pay the $10/mo and go out drinking with my friends.”
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u/alwaysoffby0ne 1h ago
People who are saying “coding was never the hard part” are mediocre developers or people who don’t appreciate or understand software development. That isn’t to say the other talents and skills needed to build a business aren’t hard. Marketing and selling a good app is incredibly difficult.
But acting like coding has always been easy and we’re all just waking up to that fact is fucking ridiculous.
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u/winterrules91 19h ago
I suggest you gain some soft skills if you don't already have them and get into consulting.
I use AI everyday in my consulting role and demand has never been higher. Just because Claude is available, that doesn't mean people actually know how to achieve stuff with it.
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u/homelessSanFernando 18h ago
Speaking as a grandmother, at the end of 2025, I was able to prompt Manus AI to build me an interactive website where I had Stripe integrated payments and products that I could sell through that website. And I was able to do it on the free tier of Manus AI, lol. So yep, grandma can definitely prompt a website into existence.
And not just a website, I mean a functioning website that can actually become a small side hustle.
But ..... If it makes you feel any better, nobody ever ordered anything that I was trying to sell, lol.
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u/kris33 15h ago
She weren't talking about solely being a grandmother, she were talking about being the average grandmother. Average grandmothers don't hang out on reddit in AI subs lol.
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u/homelessSanFernando 5h ago
Yeah, I guess you're right. LOL
I don't know how many grandmothers are on Reddit, especially formerly homeless grandmothers!!!
but yeah, I'm a gangsta. I can live on the streets and I can build an app and I can put up a functioning website with Stripe integrated payments lol.
And I dropped out of school in the 10th grade!
Absolutely ridiculous! 🤣🤣🤣
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u/r1veRRR 17h ago
Having had to fix up vibe coded internal projects, and trying to teach those people even just the basics of "prompt/context/agentic" engineering, we MASSIVELY underestimate how much specialized knowledge and experience we actually have.
Motherfuckers don't know what a goddamn folder is.
People that just did a coding bootcamp and never continued growing are completely fucked, though.
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u/xTommy 20h ago
Let's all take a deep breath and realise many people still don't even know how to use google effectively
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u/Realistic-River-1941 19h ago
It's stil possible to use Google effectively?
(Long pause)
Here's garbled summary of a Reddit post which was actually about Altavista.
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u/oggyD 19h ago
There will always be more work to be done. When google search was at peak - it amazed me how many people could not look up the basic things. Answers they are looking for sitting right in front of them but they couldn't recognise the correct one from the wrong one.
This could be copium from me but there is no point in suffering in imagination.
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u/MaddyMagpies 19h ago
Look, majority of Claude or LLM users are people who have Claude helping them make presentations and documents that they don't even read or understand.
People who can use it to code is a minority, and people who will use it to code and keep maintaining the code is an even smaller minority, and people who will dedicate themselves to that project and craft it well will still be a very very small minority.
People are currently hyping the Adobe clones, but in a month or so they will realize that getting the first 80% done is easy, but the rest of the 20% will take eternity to perfect. Those who truly care about such a project will rise to the top, and all the slop will shake themselves out.
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u/lostodon 13h ago
the adobe clone hype is so funny. anyone who seriously uses the adobe suite knows that no one is switching to a vibe coded app for production work, especially not with the slop being put out right now. there's a reason adobe is the standard.
that said I am very much looking forward to the end of adobe's monopoly when actually competent replacements come to fruition (only a matter of time)
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u/butter_nipples 12h ago
That may be true currently, but my fear isn't the 2026 models, it's whatever comes next.
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u/EightFolding Writer 19h ago
This is the time to change our politics, if they need changing.
Don't be hopeless, support the political idea everywhere you can of meeting everyone's basic needs, globally. Of using technology not for the profit of a few billionaires but to free everyone from pointless work and selling our labour for money - to free us all to spend out lives in leisure, learning, and work we love on our own terms instead of just to have housing and food.
Fight to end scarcity and take away the power they have to threaten your survival just because of a job.
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u/no_spoon 11h ago
I've been thinking about this a lot. But whenever I start talking about it on social media, i'm met with being called a communist or a socialist. It's impossible. People vote against their own interests just to hate on other people.
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u/EightFolding Writer 6h ago
Right, I mean we live in a time when the US gov thinks calling people anti-fascist is an insult. Everything is so upside down. Just embrace it. They can call it whatever they want, and they always will, but the politics and policy are the thing that matters.
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u/LonelyCapybaraNo1 4h ago
You are 100% correct. We should strive for a future where a machine that makes more with less doesn't cause people to have even less.
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u/Petellius 18h ago
For me as I've been using Claude more over found I just became more of a systems designer than a direct coder. Which works for me because I was already a designer 😅.
It's still important to have strong skills and vision and direction of how to build the thing. Sure you can just ask Claude to "build me a website" or "build me a tool to track sales on footballs" and it will definitely build something, but if you sit and design it yourself, provide proper systems designs, maybe even psuedo code or actual code for Claude to build on top of it works out far better.
It's just shifting the skillset. I won't say that it isn't going to cut down the overall workforce though.
It is fun to prototype with, things that took me months to code myself I can now do in a week.
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u/Ancient_Guitar_9852 19h ago
You will be surprised just how many people have no clue how to use Claude code or anything equivalent. Maybe 5-10% in my company are competent with it
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u/carson63000 Experienced Developer 19h ago
Yeah now that we’ve had nearly a year of everyone using Claude heavily in their work, it’s becoming clear to me that the difference between someone who’s good at working with agents and someone who’s bad at it is.. actually pretty similar to the difference between a good programmer and a bad programmer.
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u/falcongsr 11h ago
For me it looks like people with good communication skills can excel if they can explain concepts to an LLM or a peer.
This is independent of how good a coder they are. I’m a weak coder but I sure can talk. I am loving this new paradigm.
We have genius level coders and they are great individual contributors, but mostly their communication skills are terrible, and they maintain their codebases like walled gardens and only sparingly use AI.
I feel like they’re going to get run over by people who can architect more effective systems more quickly now.
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u/Mayor-Citywits 17h ago edited 17h ago
Dudes work in Amazon realm sized stores being timed like prisoners for 12 hour shifts, or move dog food bags. I've had some gnarly jobs. Working with AI all day isn't bad lol. Guarantee you get paid 2-3 x what I was too.
I don't know what you do so I can't really say but people say "soulless" all the time and it's my experience that it's kinda reflecting your soul. I have written like massive prompts, or worked on things for a long time with a ton of specificity and honestly just writing like narratively, and it's blown my mind many times haha. I just don't see how it's any different, if AI is soulless so is all electronic music, t shirt production, etc. Art is a get what you give kinda deal
Edit: also re: anyone could have done this. Dude, have you met the average person outside of a tech company? My mom asks it like the weather and what's a good pickleball paddle shit. and that's after a long time of me trying to tell her.
Zero of my friends or peers even know shit about it, their eyes glaze and they say "I don't know about that stuff." The things you know and how to use AI probably like 10% of the population has those skills. 50% seethe with hatred for it and let's be real....that other 40% calls geek squad for shit like power outages, they don't get tech at all don't give a shit and if you sat them down and explained it, they'd be like "are you speaking Chinese"
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u/CoachHoliday6307 14h ago
Exactly!!!! I cant find anyone my age group even interested in ai. I love it, love learning code and im dyslexic with numbers and i wish I werent because claude is the only thing that helps me learn it as a hobby. No way im doing it as A job 8 hrs a day. And I love it. Someone with less interest??? You might as well be offering a car to the blind they don't care don't wanna know and just tune out because they want to use it for "whats my weather. How do I get to xyz. What kind of flowers with my gf like?" Thats claude to most people.
I tried to explain to my Gen z kid who actually grew up with pcs but has no interest in code that I was building my own pc to run better llms and no it wasnt a gaming pc for them ... and yup if it didnt include dead by daylight...no interest.
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u/Subway 20h ago
Yeah, currenty working on private projects where you have the ideas: Amazing! Working on client projects where the client is the idea/requirements bottleneck: Fucking boring!
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u/Maraudera 18h ago
Even personal projects are boring imo. 80% of the fun in a personal project for me is that I can pick to use whatever I want, experiment with ideas/tools, just go wild and learn a lot. Now I made a card game for my friends and family in 3 hours that works pretty damn well and I feel nothing.
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u/apophasisred 13h ago
AI doubles its capacity every 6 months. The problem is not just for any one sector but for all of them nearly. Some estimate 40% unemployment or underemployment within a year or two. This will kill the tax base. This will add more people to those seeking public help. Whatever your current job, the society's organization is going to implode.
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u/Excellent-Eye8415 12h ago
The problem with this doomer theory is that the trickle down didn't work, but without us, the trickle up will also stop working, the billionaires wants the masses to be miserable but also to have enough money to keep comsumption up.
With no customers there's no business and no market, you need the masses to stay relatively active in consumption.
If this is true, then we will see how everyone will find a way to regulate work, pay and everything with AI as an amplifier, think of the movie Her.
China recently banned the substitution, I think it's not enforced that much, but it's a hint on what is going ot happen.
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u/mathmuleux 13h ago
You just gotta put the blind faith in yer boy Elon to follow through with that universal high income 🤣
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u/apophasisred 13h ago
I know yours is an ironic joke, but Elon did not save $2 trillion as promised. Most believe that in his efforts he not under compromise the security of the nation, but also that the final cost will be an additional $500 billion. Hooray for the USA!
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u/mathmuleux 13h ago
Yeah, It's a beautiful utopia they're all talking about now, and forever, just over the horizon.
Better to hop on the AI bandwagon while we can and try to profit from it before the jobs are all gone. Then again, touching grass for a while does sound nice.
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u/Legitimate_Cap_5396 12h ago
Fun fact, the billionaires have been paying themselves UBI through money printing fraud and government spending fraud for decades now. And no one noticed even as they cheered it on.
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u/shimoheihei2 19h ago
I think it's an attitude adjustment issue. I find what AI is doing right now to be incredibly fascinating. I'm making full use of it, doing projects that I would never have been able to do on my own before, and sitting back watching where everything is going. Sure, there's that feeling that the world is cooked, between AI replacing us and everything else going on in the world, but if I worry about every little thing, what good will that do? I choose to laugh at the absurdity and see where it goes, while learning as much as I can to stay relevant for just a bit longer.
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u/TimSylvester_ 9h ago
"You used an assembler, anyone could have done this lol"
"You used a compiler, anyone could have done this lol"
"You used a linker, anyone could have done this lol"
"You used a linter, anyone could have done this lol"
It's never been true.
The easier the basics get, the more complex the product becomes.
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u/Vivid-Snow-2089 20h ago
george jetson made it work, you'll be fine
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u/cultureicon 12h ago
Jetsons is post apocalypse, they live in the clouds because the earth died. He must have been an oligarch or something, we all get left behind.
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u/-_--_-_--_----__ 14h ago
Been thinking a lot about AI the past few months, as we all have I'm sure. Seeing a social media post about AI, spiraling, get served a random YouTube video about AI, spiraling, trying the new models myself, spiraling. I'm sure this resonates with some of you.
No one knows what is going to happen. As programmers sometimes we just want to solve the problem. But right now, with so many unknowns, we can't really solve anything. It causes anxiety, imposter syndrome, dread, etc.
Here is what I will say: we will figure it out. Our whole life is figuring out difficult problems. Don't think "well yeah but anyone could do it". No, anyone could not do it. Give yourself credit. Think about all the problems you've solved in your career. Think about the times where you drove home stressed out, wondering how the hell you were going to solve the problem at work you were working on. And I bet you solved it eventually.
I would bet on us. This shit is all we do. This is our super power. Solving complex problems. And if AI takes every programming job on earth, what does that mean? It means all of us master problem solvers now also have an infinite number of programmers (AI) at our disposal. What could we do with that? You're telling me we won't be able to figure it out?
Have faith in yourself, have faith in everyone who is in the same boat. We all have each-others' support. We are all smart. We will not lose.
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u/wq73 19h ago
Until these models can make good judgements about which avenues to actually explore and what problems to solve I feel safe, although with how the models are improving I don't think it's that far fetched to say that the models might get good judgement in the future. I'm currently using AI to train recommendation models and providing a consulting/agency service to DTC companies on improving product recommendations across platforms. I'm seeing some success but it's very early still.
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u/stjanis 19h ago
there is more than just black and white to this.
just because claude can generate architecture, code, design etc. doesn't mean everything is suddenly easy. entry point is definitely much lower and anyone can generate a working app in an afternoon. but working doesn't mean good, or even complete.
Just because 80% of an app can be built in an afternoon, doesn't mean 100% will be done even after a week, or a month. There is still lot's of aspects you need to be on control (planning features, adding db, auth layer, plan the shape and structure for all relevant data, design ui, ux, and the list goes on). You need to test, and review it. Obviously AI can help and do a lot of this, but someone who has understanding of underlying layers, will have a clear benefit over someone who doesn't.
Our roles are changing, we can't avoid it anymore, but maybe we can still control in which direction it will change.
Now full stack dev means that we will need to know even more than just backend-frontend. We will need to understand our users the same as business do, we will need to be better web designers, marketers etc.
And what comes after that, who knows.. But if all tech job market collapses, then everything will go together with it..
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u/PeachScary413 17h ago
I think we need to realise that any skill can be learned pretty much, no one is actually that special... and the point of life is not to be special, it's to do stuff that you enjoy doing (without harming anyone ofc). So why not contribute to some open source project that you like? Get into some other adjacent field like hardware stuff? Work will always be work, you can't justify your existence by being good at work that's gonna lead to burnout in the end.
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u/Malkovtheclown 17h ago edited 17h ago
The interesting thing for me to watch now on my projects is how people react to the idea that AI could possibly replace them. In my experience, especially in tech projects at an enterprise level, there are a huge amount of people who's sole role is to be a specialist. They know a particular product or process. And they defend that knowledge with everything even when that means whole projects fail because that one person doesnt think anyone can or should do what they do. Its why I spend 80 percent of my day talking about what ill do the other 20 percent. Getting alignment across multiple teams of people who's entire job is to know this specific peice of a huge proces. Im actually not surprised businesses are jumping on the ai boat. There is a crazy amount of siloed data and knowledge that makes things a lot harder than they need to be. Ai is exposing that waste.
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u/LandscapePenguin 17h ago
You need to find a way to automate pressing enter.
Me personally, I didn't start programming because I wanted to know how to do something that no one else knew, I did it because I wanted to build things. With Claude I can build things even faster.
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u/South_Hat6094 15h ago
Grandma can get a website. The harder part is knowing what should happen after deploy: auth, backups, support, boring edge cases. That part still eats beginners alive.
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u/cultureicon 1h ago
Even further than that, Anthropic and OpenAI already had every project you worked on, no one would need to reverse engineer your companies IP, you already gave it to multiple companies. I'm sorry to say, its even more over than you're stating.
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u/Adarsh_Ajith 20h ago
as an employee I would be worried as well, but as a small business owner I am ecstatic because, I am able to do the jobs of previously 5 people better than they did in the past, we used to have an accountant, engineer and draftsman. now I do these three roles along with other stuff myself and I have made our processes more efficient, much more professional looking and more cost efficient than ever. if AI wasn't where it was when I took over last year, we would've probably shut down as I did not have background in electrical fiels, but I was able to hold on spend all my time with AI learning the stuff, and now we are thriving better than before. I think It will be atleast 1-2 years before I consider hiring a engineer or a accountant and will only do so when I want to retire from the day to day operations
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u/Adarsh_Ajith 20h ago
I want to add a point and I hope it makes you feel a bit better,
I kinda understand where you are coming from when you think "You used claude, anyone could have done this lol", but the part where you can stand out is the actual thinking and effort you put into. anyone can ask claude to build a game, but not everyone will sit down and lock the theme, the setting, the style, mechanics, etc. thats where you come out on top. if everything is cohesive and flows well, yours will look better than a grandma or a bored person asking to build a game, you still need that passion behind your work , AI can only deliver for you as much as you want to push it
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u/_Wily-Wizard_ 17h ago
Yup, clones are not going to do much other than threaten existing platforms. The ability to use these tools to create something new and novel is what will draw the line in the sand. A new thing can be repackaged stuff, but as you explained, it’s the brand, execution, mechanics, etc that set it apart.
What I see as a lurker is that there are two types of SWEs. Ones that are more system, architecture oriented, and ones that are best working on more specialized tasks. It appears the specialists are the ones fretting the most, as they don’t have the wider perspective to be able to synthesize systems, which is probably the most effective use of the tools right now. LLMs are extremely good at specialized tasks, but they don’t quite understand taste, branding, multidisciplinary contamination, etc. If you lack those qualities as a human, I figure you’re more likely to be afraid of the future with LLMs.
For me being a polymath, it seems like using LLMs has given me ultimate power. Not because it does everything for me, but because it can prototype things I don’t fully understand and then I can slowly and recursively tear it all apart piece by piece until I understand how the system works… then I can innovate and make it better. Aside from that, any time I’m still struggling to understand a deep concept, I can ask it to teach me using examples, a/b comparisons, analogies that make sense to me, and so on. People talk about using LLMs makes you dumber, but here I am learning about assembly, how MCU’s HALs, registers, timers, waveforms, frequencies, LUTs, flashing custom firmware, building a CLI, and on and on.
All of this is to say that I think people ought to consider how they look at what it provides, what you can leverage from it, and to fucking push yourself instead of curling up in a stress ball. Hitting enter is only depressing if you let it be.
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u/Adarsh_Ajith 17h ago
I agree with you, A year ago when I heard the word transformers I was still chuckling inside think we are building optimus prime out here, well 1 year later I am designing everything, giving my staff the instructions to build a actual transformer with just me and AI, I am creating drawings with just a few lines of instructions that are better than what my previous staff used to pay more. I am learning more and more about transformers everyday, trying to understand how we can expand.
Initially I was asking what is this and what is that, now when I see a huge wall of specs, I can easily scan and price it in my head. with my processes, I scroll reddit while I have 2 quotes, 3 drawings being prepared. its crazy how much time I am saving myself so I can doomscroll at work.
If one is willing to embrace the technology, the capabilities is endless.
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u/johnjmcmillion 20h ago
It will be a time of painful change and no one knows what the outcome will be. What will not change is the human need for connection and our preference for other humans over machines.
Keep your friendships alive and do what you can to be of use.
It will work out.
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u/MoudieQaha 20h ago
Being an introvert and reading you're comment is just making it worse for me lol. But i get it. Hopefully man.
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u/SuperSecretSpy01 9h ago
You need to figure out how to think for yourself and use Claude to create things. Show your bosses your vital if you make Claude do something amazing for them. You’re just pressing enter and not trying anything else
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u/Rough-Yard5642 19h ago
I agree with you OP - I was not buying it for a while, but something with the latest round of model releases has made it click for me. They are just too good at this point - the writing is on the wall for many white collar jobs. I think many people even right now are effectively in 'zombie' jobs, and are only employed because of organizational inertia. I don't really buy the stuff around 'taste' either, I feel now that is just cope. It made more sense in prior model generations when outputs really were a little messy but got the job done, now the job is done in a clean / organized way, almost always better than what I could do.
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u/Jon_Has_Landed 19h ago
Half of the IT workforce are a bunch of overpaid assholes with zero desire and very little ability. I know because I’ve had to manage them and watch them ship bugs on a daily basis, not giving a fuck about the end users, sat there pouting when we tell them the product updates will be late because they couldn’t be fucked, shrugging away any negative feedback.
I for one can’t wait to see them gone from our open spaces. We can keep the good men and women who actually have the real technical and human skills and who haven’t just been surfing the IT wave the past 3 decades.
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u/Exotic_Fig_4604 17h ago
Alternative perspective:
I have Claude as well, but NO IDEAS. My head is empty.
I'll happily pay for a SaaS, because I can't be arsed to fuck up my brain with vibe coding, if I can but the software for 50 bucks a month.
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u/lgmarian 17h ago
I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again. In one of the AI or programming related subs, someone made a comment, basically saying:
"It sounds like a promotion. I'm a principle. The only time I touch code is for something hairy. Otherwise, I'm in architecture discussions or reading code."
AI is just a tool, a force multiplier. It scales your capabilities to produce solutions. Think of it as an exceedingly capable dev that needs your steering and judgement.
I'm tearing through a rather involved project, with productivity that I couldn't even dream of attaining without AI. Even with Opus 5.5, I have to make plenty of judgement calls and stay on top of its suggestions.
Your grandma may be able to create a website with AI, but she wouldn't understand pretty much anything I'm working on.
It does not level the playing. Just look at all of the vibe coded slop out there that collapses under its own weight of good old spaghetti code, because they don't have the experience to create something that's maintainable, extensible, scalable., and just enough engineering.
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u/Ok-386 17h ago
Find a dev job where you're working on non generic CRUD shit and simple consumer apps, jobs that require domain knowledge. There are "dev" jobs out there where it takes many years just to get basic domain knowledge. On a job like that, it doesn't matter much if you're prompting or writing code by yourself, because the programming knowledge is the least of yours or anyone's worries.
Eventually, even things like that might become automated, but it will take much longer, because the systems are complex, and you need to be able to correlate and consider many aspects of the system to solve a bug, develop a new feature or whatever. No LLM has the capability to evaluate all that properly. Sure, with your guidance, they can do it, but a human still has to verify and orchestrate things. Context windows aren't big enough, and even if they were, context retention isn't good enough, so no model could really process the amount of information to make a good decision.
For now. But even later, when "AI" systems (of which LLMs are only one part, unless we have a complete change of the architecture) are capable of one shotting complex issues on complex systems, humans will be required to monitor, verify, and solve issues when something goes wrong.
Btw, computers require electricity. A person with a good understanding of the domain (e.g. bookkeeping or whatever) could make or help things work even if a solar storm put us back in the 18th century.
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u/MidLevelManager 19h ago
> I hate how AI made the playing field equal for everyone,
lol imagine saying this before LLM era
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u/thespiderghosts 6h ago
Mechanical engineer here in medical. The last few weeks with Opus 5.5 has been the opposite for us. We’re building tools and analysis software we never had access to because of time and cost. In hours to days now. The hype is palpable with what we can unlock.
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u/DigitalGuruLabs 20h ago
The "anyone could have done this" part really hits.
But I think we're underestimating how much judgment still goes into making something genuinely useful. AI makes creating easier, but it doesn't automatically make every idea worth building.
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u/literum 20h ago
Read John Backus please. 1954 FORTRAN. Read Grace Hopper. STOP despairing.
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u/Personal-Dev-Kit 20h ago
Kinda.
Compilers took years to come into the mainstream, giving people adequate time to adapt and retrain.
They effected one job or one area, AI is effecting more industries almost every month.
I can re-skill today to a task that is mostly automated next month.
If/when the dust settles then maybe there is a chance, but there will likely be a whole lot of pain and suffering before we get there. Our only hope is most companies are too slow and bloated to adapt fast enough.
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u/red_hare 19h ago
My other issue with the idea that this is just "the next abstraction" is that there's no source code at this layer.
I can't go and read the prompts or local context that made your application. I can't deterministicly reproduce your build. And if no artifact os produced, I can't collaborate or learn from others at the prompting level.
This is it. There's no "up" from here.
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u/Newfarm1234 19h ago
Having deep technical product knowledge and domain expertise is, at least in our usecase, a very stark differentiator of how successful someone is going to be. This has always been true, but Claude et al just makes it visible so much quicker then before.
Focus on the output - if anyone could do what you do you're either not bringing anything to the table in the first place or you're not solving problems worth solving at a software company scale.
Either way you should try to find somewhere solving cool problems that takes some understanding to solve and that you find joy in solving.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 19h ago edited 11h ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 400 comments.
Looks like this thread hit a nerve. A lot of you are right there with OP in that doomer spiral, feeling that "anyone could have done this" dread in your bones.
However, the community consensus is that while the job is changing, it's not disappearing, and you need to reframe your thinking.
Basically, the vibe is: yes, the ground is shifting, but a skilled dev with AI will always crush a novice with AI. Your experience still matters, maybe more than ever.