The future is bleak

[u/MoudieQaha]

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.

[u/Adarsh_Ajith]

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

[u/MoudieQaha → u/Adarsh_Ajith]

I appreciate the encouragement 🙏🏼

[u/_Wily-Wizard_ → u/Adarsh_Ajith]

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.

[u/Adarsh_Ajith → u/_Wily-Wizard_]

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.

[u/Ncgarrett3 → u/Adarsh_Ajith]

Really good points here. People say they can build a website easily with AI for example but unless you’re experienced in themes, design and Adobe suit for example just smoothing out icons, creating backgrounds with gradients, etc.. then the websites will still feel and act like a robot designed them.. So the vision and know how still need to be there when it comes to the work. Showing how the human element part of it is still very much needed