Just to make this clear up front: I was always very skeptical of LLMs (I’ll never call them AI) and still see them as fundamentally limited and unreliable. See my post history if you don’t believe me.
Having said that: I work in business software and the models have progressed to the point where typing code and writing classes and functions by hand has become uneconomical. We review the output closely to avoid the idiocy of “vibe-coding”, but the quality has improved to the point where we rarely have to outright reject solutions. The discussions have moved to high-level architectural points, where we just request better implementations than the first-shot. We get them, review again and move on. Maybe there are deeper, latent problems beeing embedded in the code-base through this process, but we can’t spot any although we are looking intently.
And just like that, my profession has died. Nobody in my team writes code anymore. Things that would have taken days are now done in minutes. We are all just considering design and architecture. We are changing our processes since they are not fit for the new way of doing things. Scrum? What’s even the point anymore? We can work through a sprint-backlog that would’ve taken two weeks in two days now. We do reviews 90% of the time. When we request changes they come back in minutes.
I have a feeling like the ground has been taken from below me. My son wanted to become a developer, that isn’t a real job anymore. Everyone around me feels the same way, including our management. We are a small team and a small company, everyone is effective and our jobs are not in danger as long as our product is succesful. But my profession is essentially dead. It’s a craft I honed for many, many years and the craft itself is now automated. I wanted to improve my typing skills to code faster, this is now a ridiculous endeavour. We don’t know what comes next, but I now only have my analytical skills and knowledge of good architecture to fall back on.
And it all changed so fast. I don’t think this will transfer to other professions so easily, but for programming LLMs ended it all in the span of the last four months. I thought I knew what my future holds as a senior dev, now I can barely see past christmas.This is a nightmare.
As a (not so anymore) newly graduated computer engineer, this made me cry. Whenever I see threads like this the consolation thrown around is that someone with experience will always need to check the code and seniors didn’t used to write much code anyways. And juniors are all LLM jockeys anyways so who cares.
Well fuck me I guess, the last train to break into the industry departed 3 years ago when I thought I was learning my profession. A couple months ago I felt principled, I wanted a job where I wouldn’t be forced to vibe code. Now I’ll take anything.
At this rate even if I do manage to get hired, and even if by some muracle I’m allowed to write code there; the experience I gain from it wont be valued the same as someone who started working before LLMs became widespread. I’m a part of the slop generation now.
Makes me wonder what answer pr people want when they ask if and how I use ai. Do they want me to use them or not? If I use them, I accept that I have no place among the senior developers of tomorrow, if I don’t I’m missing on the one skill that companies looking to hire me expect me to have for the sake of something likely to be obsolete.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made being a developer a part of my identity while still in university. Is it time to let it go? Accept that I’ve spent years on something I wanted and believed would lead to a good life for it to just not pay off? That the safest most sensible fucking life choice imaginable just left me unemployable?
Maybe it’s for the best, as they say “Don’t turn your hobbies into a job”. But it breaks my heart to let go. Where would I even pivot here?
Sorry if this was rambling. This is a cry for help
This entire thread is pure doomerism. Don’t let it get to you. I’ve been in this field for just long enough to recognize this house of cards for what it is. I’ve seen the garbage LLMs spit out and anyone who thinks developing like that is sustainable either had their soul beaten into submission, or they’re full of shit.
I don’t wanna repeat myself, so I’ll link a previous comment: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/22227493
Stay strong friend.
If it makes you feel better they were selling you a bill of goods from the jump. Programming hasn’t been a stable or good career for ten years and the writing was on the wall twenty years ago. The fix was in when “learn to code” became commonplace.
The prevalence of the h1b program would have made your course of study a dead end in a few years even without llms.
Get an electricians certification and be a lineman. There will always be construction and storms. We’re building new houses so shitty that it’s guaranteed and there isn’t a weather control gun yet (even if there was, no one would use it to protect the people who live in tornado alleys or floodplains). You can’t get into that job in middle age so start young and avoid the temptation to buy a duramax, it’s how 20 year olds making 150k get fucked over. When everyone gives you shit for not having a truck, buy that old 6.0 and have a good mechanic fix it up.
If you really need the validation of typing instructions to a computer, go into embedded systems. Everyone will make fun of you because they’re twice your age but it’s a job. Those controllers aren’t going away because it’s a multi ten to hundred million dollar contract to replace them and it’s a few tens of thousands of couple hundred thousand to update them.
Stay in white collar work if you ever plan to get into it again. There’s a one way check valve on that so the moment you drive a truck you’re never getting hired for any entry level office position again no matter your qualifications. You can move back into office work at the management level though. The move is to make management on a work crew and then move back into an office.
Consider joining the brain drain. There’s lots of foreign companies happy to suck up discounted domestic talent.
Your work isn’t your identity no matter the job.
Being flexable in the coming years will mean having a savings you can fall back on and pumping it back up after you do. Learn how to set a budget and how to stick to it.
Untrue IMO. A senior developer knows when to use which tool. As a future senior developer you’ll need to know when to use AI and when not to.
I see people who have been writing code and architecting systems for 20 years use AI to speed up parts of their workflow. More time left over for architectural work when 2 hours of debugging a stupid bug can be a prompt fired away while you go think about more big picture things.
If I had to interview for a job right now and was asked about AI usage, I would say that I’m definitely going to lean towards more manual work in the beginning to understand the projects and the tech stack better, and once I’m more comfortable with my knowledge, I’ll use more AI again, as I can verify its output. In the meantime, it’s still a fantastic search tool too.
I’m not an expert, but maybe you can say you use LLMs for some projects and develop others by hand for the best of both worlds?