I can relate, I was really looking forward to settling into mentorship roles.
However I am not quite so defeated, I think that developers will continue to find employment in tech even as AI augments the roles. Experienced developers are the obvious pick for a hire to run agentic AI development tools, and even the obvious pick for managing a no-code endgame scenario as they are just smart technologists with strong problem solving skills.
I think the devs who were only here for the paycheck and would not reasonably pick software if it didn't pay so much, will probably be happy to retrain into something else but be disappointed by the paycut.
I am also excited by the prospect of being able to take on bigger scale side projects solo as that's really where my passion lies.
I think general purpose technologists will really excel in this new ecosystem as the industry will be back to moving fast and breaking stuff for a while, for better or worse. A lot of them call themselves programmers right now but will evolve pretty quickly.
Pragmatism, small teams and fast pace will best deliver software based projects, and the bottleneck in big orgs will become (or already was) the bureaucracy and communication layers. Small team, greenfield projects have a huge advantage in getting an MVP to market, which is pretty exciting for someone excited mostly by solving problems with technology.
Time will tell though, this is not career advice and times are chaotic. At the end of the day, there are other careers, and you were smart enough to get into software. You will be smart enough to find a new career.
Yes, I agree. I think it's true there will be less demand for developers, and that the problem of mentoring and growing juniors into seniors is dire and complex.
But I don't think the demand will ever be zero, or that laypersons will ever write (useful) software using AI, because most people do not understand what software is, what it does, what it can do, where to start, what to ask, what is data, what is input vs. output, etc. They are incredibly clueless, and it's not a problem of intelligence. Some of the most clever people I know have no idea about this. (Maybe they don't care enough to understand, or maybe it's a mindset that you either have or don't have, IDK.)
I just don't see how we could do without people to think things through.
> I think the devs who were only here for the paycheck and would not reasonably pick software if it didn't pay so much, will probably be happy to retrain into something else but be disappointed by the paycut.
this could be one of the silver linings to AI disrupting the industry. tech was better for the world when it was run by nerds that were in it for the love of the game.
I haven't figured out how this is going to go yet. I see a lot of jobs asking for experience in stuff that is no longer necessary. I'm just going 100% all in on vibe coding and architecture.
Would love this but I feel like it is equally likely to end up being something like: “solve 500 leet code hard problems with agentic tooling while I grill you about a time when you dealt with failure”
I still prefer that to "here's a problem statement with some subtle non-obvious approach specific to this class of problem, either you've memorized it in advance or you fail."
However I am not quite so defeated, I think that developers will continue to find employment in tech even as AI augments the roles. Experienced developers are the obvious pick for a hire to run agentic AI development tools, and even the obvious pick for managing a no-code endgame scenario as they are just smart technologists with strong problem solving skills.
I think the devs who were only here for the paycheck and would not reasonably pick software if it didn't pay so much, will probably be happy to retrain into something else but be disappointed by the paycut.
I am also excited by the prospect of being able to take on bigger scale side projects solo as that's really where my passion lies.
I think general purpose technologists will really excel in this new ecosystem as the industry will be back to moving fast and breaking stuff for a while, for better or worse. A lot of them call themselves programmers right now but will evolve pretty quickly.
Pragmatism, small teams and fast pace will best deliver software based projects, and the bottleneck in big orgs will become (or already was) the bureaucracy and communication layers. Small team, greenfield projects have a huge advantage in getting an MVP to market, which is pretty exciting for someone excited mostly by solving problems with technology.
Time will tell though, this is not career advice and times are chaotic. At the end of the day, there are other careers, and you were smart enough to get into software. You will be smart enough to find a new career.