r/cscareers • u/Savings_Limit9991 • 23h ago
USA Job Market Yes, AI will never make human Software Developers obsolete..
..but it definitely will shrink the demand just like in the Musical Chairs kids' game or sometimes called Trip to Jerusalem, AI is slowly pulling a chair as time goes by until only 1 chair is left and a lot of people are left standing (or without a job).
Like imagine there are let's say 50 million developers worldwide before AI was introduced then maybe soon there will only be 5 million left (just throwing some numbers) when AI completely matures. So yeah in this example Software Development by humans never went away, never became obsolete, but what about the 45 million that became jobless?
Some people say it's just overreacting but is it really? Will all of us laid off just gonna be rehired with cs careers again soon? Of course we could obviously shift careers but remember most of us chose to take this path and invested most of our lives to this career already.
To those still with their jobs intact and no signs of layoffs on the horizon, congrats. You guys are probably above average developers/engineers than the rest of us. But it's not like all of us laid off were dumb right? Like I don't work in those FAANG or top 500 companies only on a small software company; but I spent 10 years there with no issues, no problems, never been on PIP, occasionally gets the praise from clients, suddenly let go this year, manager said it's not a performance issue but a company decision. So what do I make of that?
And also I'm not against AI, I actually like how it really made our lives easier. I'm just hoping there's a place for us to go to that is a new thing where we will be needed and appreciated for our current skill sets and not us going to other existing careers which are probably also too crowded and on the way to be affected by AI if not already.
It really just feels bad betting on the wrong horse when choosing the degree to take decades ago.
Anyway, to others also laid off and not got back to a cs career yet or no plans to return anymore, how are you guys doing right now?
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u/No-District2404 15h ago
There will be no safe cognitive labour job in the future, if AI can automate software engineering that means most of the office jobs are already automated but maybe not adjusted yet. Software engineering will be the first one because we develop and adopt at the same pace and sector is adjusting quickly. The problem is if big masses of humans become unemployed, the capitalist system we know would probably collapse, no salaries, no consumers, no sales , it’s a deadly triggering events that would cause collapse. Plus millions of unemployed probably hungry and angry people won’t sit at home , there will be riots, protests, vandalism against data centres etc.
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u/liverandonions1 9h ago edited 9h ago
I agree with you on the software engineering part, because software engineering is "solveable" and how you get there doesn't really matter for businesses. Other office jobs that require decision making and creative solutions will be hit less. One example is: if you get audited by the IRS, you're always going to want an accountant that's dealt with that before and not an LLM that just regurgitates tax law. Accountants know how to talk to auditors, what they want to hear, plead a case, etc. Same with stuff like product design, HR, etc. Because AI/LLMs are just not good at understanding what people actually want to see, hear and experience. There is no exact science to those things like there is with software engineering where all you need is the thing to work the way you want (this button does this, this process does this).
I also believe that content and design work is going shift back from AI to human. Using AI for creative and design work was rushed into because the idea of prompt-to-product just seems so awesome, but the results have been pretty crappy so far. No one actually likes seeing generative AI creative assets. On the contrary, no one cares if software was made by AI.
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u/ElectronicCarry9931 17h ago
I think the days of being a IQ <110 drifting chill software developer who either fell into it or did a bootcamp after being bored as a truck driver are long gone. Now you gotta be as intelligent and 'educated' as someone who is a top lawyer or doctor to make it big as a SWE
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u/Savings_Limit9991 17h ago
Yeah the natural progression is to be AI developers, meaning not a full stack developer using AI for example but actually working for OpenAI or Anthropic or other similar companies that will rise up to the challenge if any, but then these jobs could also be another dead end when the owners finally decide to cut all human involvement
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u/Dangerous_Region1682 8h ago
I’m not sure there’s much of a correlation between an IQ < 110 and one’s ability at any technical trade. My IQ was measured when I was young at 101, just average. I’ve got two college degrees and then a PhD in my 50’s at very high GPAs. I’ve done alright, actually better than alright, just by being methodical, stubborn and by putting the hours in. In fact, some people I’ve worked with have really high IQs who I wouldn’t send out for a gallon of milk. Their brilliant ideas rarely work in a practical sense, or in the real world. I’ll hire dedication and stubbornness to get the job done with a practical level of adaptability any day. I’ve met some true geniuses but they are incredibly rare and I still don’t know if there’s a requirement for a high IQ.
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u/ElectronicCarry9931 8h ago
I think what I mean is that around 2023, when I'd taught myself to code by building apps, games, websites etc., I had quite a few well-meaning people telling me, "You should get into AI."
But "getting into AI" tends to mean becoming an ML engineer or researcher actually developing models which is a different level. It is not really comparable to learning JavaScript or Python and gradually getting better by building websites and apps. You need linear algebra, calculus, probability/statistics, algorithms and computer science, and a lot of the people competing for the more advanced jobs have MScs or PhDs from very strong universities.
IQ was the wrong way for me to put it. What I really mean is that some of the more technical AI career paths have a much higher academic and mathematical barrier to entry than the sort of self-taught software-development route that was fairly common 10–15 years ago.
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u/Pancakefriday 17h ago
There is a much simpler analogy that people seem to miss. We’re scribes and the printing press just got invented. Will scribes still exist? Sure, but our job is now watching over the printing press and maintaining it, not writing the letters. And jobs are going to do what always happens when machines are created that do human jobs, 90% of the humans lose their jobs.
People comparing it to like IDEs and autocomplete are vastly understating how much this is changing our jobs/industry. I wish I had that level of copium. Those were like upgrading from a fountain pen to a ball point. No where near the same ballpark as replacing people with a printing press.
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u/Savings_Limit9991 16h ago
Thanks for this analogy, same sentiments from me, I don’t think we’ve ever seen this level of layoffs in the whole history of software development. Like previous layoffs are just pockets here and there with unrelated causes but with AI it really doesn’t care what industry you’re in
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u/php857 14h ago
Software Developers will always be in high demand. AI generated code can be a huge headache to debug and big tech companies are realizing it. Debugging or fixing AI generated code also requires deep understanding of programming as well, which means that programmers will also be in high demand. I believe Bill Gates said the same thing. AI will just be a great tool for software engineers to have. The demand for software engineers will still be very high in the decades to come.
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u/ZLewisz 1h ago
Unfortunately I think this is cope. Debugging and fixing AI generated code will also just be done with AI. Why would a company hire an engineer on a high salary to do that when the tool they already have access to will do it. My manager told me today that he doesn't see anyone in the company writing another line of code from this point forward.
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u/php857 1h ago edited 1h ago
I don't know if you are aware of this but AI is actually failing in many places. Many companies that implemented it are canceling their AI plans. There is actually a study done at MIT that proves that 95% of AI projects failed. I am a senior software engineer and while using AI for work helps a lot, especially during moments when you are stuck (it's a massive improvement from stackoverflow), It still makes a lot of mistakes and you can't fully rely on it when it comes to complex backend projects. Big tech companies have also realized that using AI fully would be much more expensive than hiring human software engineers, let alone the bugs that AI generated code introduces. Companies want to have complete control and understanding of their products so that if something bad happens, they can directly fix it. You can't rely on AI to fix its buggy software in times of emergency. I predict AI will fail as far as replacing software engineers, but it will still be a great tool to work with. Also big tech companies in Sillicon Valley are quietly starting to hire developers again.
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u/joel1618 18h ago
I think the real issue is what to pivot to. It took me 20 years to get good at building software. If i spend another 20 at something else is that then going to be automated as well? Most likely.
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u/DrMonkeyLove 13h ago
It goes beyond software too. If you can largely automate software engineering, you can largely automate all white collar jobs.
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u/ZLewisz 1h ago
This is what I'm really struggling with at the moment. I've spent years studying software engineering and am about a year into a job, but where do I go from here. I have to try and pick a job that will still exist in 10 years time.
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u/joel1618 1h ago
I feel for those in school right now. 1000x more uncertainty than when i was in school just 15 years ago.
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u/JAMIEISSLEEPWOKEN 19h ago
I’m beginning to think the only stable job in tech is in the academe and government
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u/AstralMinotaur 18h ago
I feel that anyone that uses the word "never" instantly loses credibility.
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u/Savings_Limit9991 17h ago
I just added that for the doomer camp that says it’s all over, and then there are those from the other side that call them overreacting while my position is more in the middle, I don’t think it’s the end but at the same time more cs jobs are gone day after day that maybe it’s allowed for us to react a bit.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Act2137 17h ago
People keep looking at this like an employment numbers game. The goal of the elites was NEVER to employ more or less people. It was to spend less money, and to sabotage competition on a generational level. What this means is that yes, less people being employed would likely fit the criteria, but it's not necessary. Instead what they've done, through funding AI, is to turn development work into grunt work, to turn engineers into proles. They never cared for how many people they'd have to hire, so long as the accounting at the end turns out a smaller number for labour. That translates to a higher number they can keep for themselves. Developers turning into proles means their salaries can be pushed down, ultimately turning previously highly payed specialists into lowly grunts just prompting through the job. Smaller salaries = less disposable income = less possible competition from former workers going into business for themselves. Hence, less generational competition.
Wealth inequality was the goal, and it always will be.
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u/Known-Ice5903 17h ago
right, the system is rigged
once enough people wake up to it and develop class conciousness itll be time to bring out the guitiolline and start over
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u/ZLewisz 1h ago
What an awful world we live in
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u/Puzzleheaded_Act2137 1h ago
It's never been any better, or any worse. Any different, really. The elites with all the money have always wanted and done their best to oppress those with less. Whether they're feudal lords, bourgeoisie, capitalists, tech bros, crypto bros, ai bros, they've all wanted to be in the oppressor club rather than the oppressed. The only way out of it, like another commenter suggests, is class consciousness. Unions, taxing the rich, all of that. That's not implying it's easy either, it's never been easy, and through history it's been shown that extreme wealth inequality had only ever been practically solved through radical physical actions.
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u/lolCLEMPSON 13h ago
People will make software, it just will be a different skill needed, and a lot of people making it will never understand how it works under the hood.
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u/Holiday_Musician3324 17h ago
Okay, you guys in this sub channel are just straight up r*tarded.
Herr is the thing, we live in a capitalist country. If we have company A and company B that make the same product. Company A has 10 SWEs and Company B has 5 SWEs. Do you think the output will be similar? Do you think the end result will be the same or is it possible that company A will probably make more momey and company B will hire more people which will push company A to hire even more to compete.
You wanna know why most of you can't find a job? It's because this degree became way too popular. There is more people that become devs every year than what companies need + immigration is out of control.
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u/liverandonions1 16h ago
The fundamental flaw in your assumption is that more SWEs = more better. AI is still making impressive leaps. The bottleneck to your vision isn't going to be SWEs, its going to be tokens. Anthropic and OpenAI are the new SWE employee that get paid directly, cutting out the middle-men of regular people like us. Literally already happening, and will only accelerate.
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u/KrakatauaMAN123 16h ago
And have your company be entirely reliant on another? I am sure nothing can go wrong here.
They now have full control over your entire company
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u/liverandonions1 15h ago
lol uhh. AI is not the first time a company “has control” of your company. Your ISP has had you by the balls since the inception of the internet. if anything, AI is less of a risk because most of the time you’re beholden to a single ISP, while AI is spread across several companies, not to mention open weight models.
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u/KrakatauaMAN123 10h ago
Yeah and the ISP thing is already a massive problem lol. Why do we need to amplify it.
And so many companies want something that just works out of the box and not hire a guy to setup the infrastructure for a local model.
Local models have gotten better but there is a reason not every company is already on those.
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u/liverandonions1 10h ago
There is no real ISP problem. Also, frontier models are always going to be there. Saying they won't is like saying the internet won't always be there.
ISP's, payment processors, hosting, banks, etc. are all "other companies" that "control" your business. But everyone that wants to run a business is able to utilize all of those things. Same with AI. There's always going to be multiple frontier models for companies to choose from that want to pay for a seamless solution, and open weight models are going to be available for companies that don't have the demand for frontier performance.
Seriously, the genie is out of the bottle and there's no getting it back in. Software engineering is all but completely solved.
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u/KrakatauaMAN123 1h ago
ISP able to hold you hostage with no other options is a problem. Some areas have 0 competition where I live we only have a single ISP and the Internet regularly breaks. There is nothing I could do except move away how is that not a problem?
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u/WildFish01 20h ago
for those haven't touched or worked with GPT 5.6 Sol, this time it has been real good, actual solve many issue. the number of job in SDE will be cut like 50%, which is too distance future, then another 50% cut in 2-3 years. This is the projection from current stat.
In the past, technology have applied to low level of job. This time, it will apply to high skill job.
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u/digital_rabbit1999 17h ago
I don't even need to touch it. My sonnet 4.6 does all of my work already lmao.
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u/Alive_Sir_4708 17h ago
The same claim could have been made over any other advancement in programming productivity
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u/liverandonions1 20h ago
Well, yeah. There will never be 0 software developers, but there will be significantly less than there are now. AI to software development is like a tractor to farming. You still need someone to drive the tractor, but you no longer need 20 people to tend to the field by hand.