Ask HN: SWEs – Are y'all worried about your jobs?

Not at all. I work in a field that can't use public (or in many cases commercially) available solutions. We have studied the use of AI using private models that are based on the publicly available models for some isolated use-cases. The outcome was that AI is no where near mature enough to write anything besides basic solutions.

If AI does penetrate and become effective in my area, it's another tool. Just like you write less and less code as you achieve higher roles, you'll spend more time using AI rather than writing "raw" code.

One way or another, AI will become part of our jobs. To what level and when will greatly vary from industry to industry.

I don’t think you’ll find many people on HN that are too concerned. On the other hand, I truly pity aspiring devs in school now. The drawbridges on the profession seem like they are getting raised and I don’t know how an intern or junior can add enough value to cut their teeth in the face of things like Devin.

I was absolutely blown away when I saw the demos.

Then about 15 minutes later, after some reflection, I thought about what I just saw:

-An LLM generating code

-An LLM Agent taking a request, breaking it down into tasks, and then creating a plan

- An LLM using tools (shell, compiler, web browser)

Wait a minute, I've seen all these things before. Many times. So why was I so impressed?

I thought about it. Well, the UI was slick. But really, the wow factor was due to how much it was able to accomplish with a single prompt like "Benchmark Llama2 on these 3 cloud providers". Then I started wondering whether it actually did all those things from that one prompt or whether there was an entire days worth of prompting, interspersed with manual steps, spliced together into a 2 minute video. Like that staged Gemini demo video from a few months ago. Hmmm.

Worried, but in a measured way.

Craftsmanship is still important and will remain important. Being able to work with systems as they exist is also incredibly important. There will be a lot of apps created and they will need to be maintained, or made to scale, and that will require more programmers as the solutions start to strain - AI code may end up the new "legacy PHP" code.

My prediction (worth almost nothing): A lot of folks will lose their jobs, and average pay will go down, sometimes by a very high amount for developers that aren't at staff level - the "able to buy a house where there are jobs" rung on the economic ladder will keep rising and income inequality will keep increasing until something major is done about it. Business owners will be able to do more with less, and the job of programming will get more difficult as more productivity will be expected.

What I'm doing about it: Let the future come and react to what happens, not what I think will happen. Keep living my life and find things that are important to me outside of work. Remind myself our time is always limited, and make the most of relationships I have and seek contentment rather than happiness.

it is even hard for a PM/PO to define functions/workflow of a project/app by writing the requirements.

Not really? Someone could always get a fast but not very good developer for very cheap to 'replace' me. Like, I'm not paid well because of the 80% work I do. I'm paid because 2% of the time I do work that no one else can do very well.

Not particularly. Reading through https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1bd12gc/..., this looks like good old-fashioned vaporware.

I’ve found reality often moves much slower than optimistic projections from someone trying to sell something. The reality of the solution is often far more complicated than the sales pitch as well.

15-20 years ago everyone was worried about getting outsourced, and all the software engineering jobs in the US would be gone. Here we still are.

No, I'm excited. Better tools mean I can achieve more.

I’m honestly not worried at all. I just see it as another tool to take care of mundane work, if it’s even that helpful. You still need context and domain knowledge to build features / fix bugs.

> SWEs – Are y'all worried about your jobs?

no

As a junior having only started two years ago, I am worried. I am very behind on what I need to know to be valuable beyond creating CRUD apps.

It feels like I need to either have an idea and build it myself or change careers. Perhaps this is overly pessimistic, but the rate at which everything is changing is alarming.

Not at all, those tools barely help if you need to deal with encrypted data or any kind of complex domain, also it can't handle very well distributed systems tradeoffs.

I believe it can probably do CRUD well, but before AI there were already no-code tools that could handle such cases. I personally don't see any big win.

Even Github Copilot is kinda useless, it offers too many bad suggestions before showing the right one, sometimes I just disable it.

It can be useful when learning a new prog language though. I actually wish that those AI tools would be better...

I visit job search sites and select the “entry level” filter. Then, I read requirements such as “2+ years (non-internship) experience in C++”, “5 years of professional experience in the game industry”, and “excellent C++ skills”. Furthermore, there are requirements like “Fluent in speaking reverse Mandarin Chinese” and “being able to perform perfect back and front flips on command”. The latter two are, of course, exaggerations, but I couldn't help joking about them to alleviate the dire circumstances not only I find myself in, but also others in my circles.

I know individuals who attended top computer science universities, earned master's degrees, yet they still struggle to find a job. The missing element in such conversations is that recent graduates often lack the required expertise that HR departments demand. Companies or their HR departments have become extremely selective and require multiple interview rounds before considering employment. Alternatively, companies hire student workers because they are cheaper, or they outsource hiring to countries like India, Eastern Europe, or Turkey, pausing hiring for entry-level applicants in high-income countries.

However, some governments claim a “shortage of skilled labor especially in the IT sector,” while individuals with computer science degrees find themselves unemployed in these “uncertain times”. Experienced individuals may manage to stay afloat, but those without experience, such as recent graduates like myself, are deemed less valuable. This is partly due to the prevalence of Large Language Models (LLMs), which I refer to as “Google search on steroids”.

Have you heard of “bullshit jobs”? If so, I suspect that many positions are actually insignificant. As a student worker, I co-developed an audio editing application (C++17, Qt 5). To be honest, there was nothing in it that hadn't already been solved. Would you argue that a “level meter”, “equalizer”, or “JSON parser” are things that need to be reinvented despite the availability of MIT-licensed libraries?

Rather, these jobs appear to be a form of “collective busywork”. Nevertheless, the fortunate few engaged in such “busywork” earn significant sums despite not contributing much. What kind of economy is this, where one can thrive without generating actual value (e.g., innovation, non-copy paste work)?

A “consumer-oriented economy”, huh? We need consumers, yet we cannot drive up consumption, because we collectively play a game of hot potato until someone solves all the world's woes for us.

First they came for the weavers, and I did not speak out — because I was not a weaver.

Then they came for the artisans, and I did not speak out — because I was not an artisan.

Then they came for me, and I started screeching and coping — because now I might have to get a heckin' blue collar job!

I wouldn't say "not at all" because I think the industry is going to change at least a little bit, so with change comes inestability.

I think that my ability regarding problem solving will be valuable in the future, maybe if most of software engineering becomes fully automated I could build some valuable product easier, just thinking, writing and using feedback loops for the continuous iteration of the product. That would be awesome, I like programming but I love problem solving.

If the above is not possible, I've some investments and savings that could help me take some time to adapt to the new environment and find something where I could provide some value.

And if the above is not possible there are some possibilities:

- we live in leisure while the machines do the work for us -> great!

- we don't exist anymore, the machines won -> bummer, we had a nice ride.

- I'm no longer useful to the new environment -> I prefer not to think about this :P

No. I was a JavaScript programmer for 15 years. I should have left that line of work more than 10 years ago, but I was really good at it. The problem is that the industry baseline for competence is exceptionally low, so the longer I remained doing that work the more incompatible I became. I was laid off last year and desperate for employment so I could pay my bills, but I was also patient.

I am in a different line of work now. In this new line of work the business challenges are greater but the technical challenges are less challenging. I am essentially starting over so at the moment the technical challenges are still plenty challenging for me.

I still enjoy writing JavaScript for personal applications, but I will never go back to that line of work. Its an industry where the least competent dominate the hiring requirements because nobody wants to invest in formal training, so everything is a race to the bottom. AI can replace 90% of those overpaid unqualified people and the world will be better off enjoying faster and more secure products at far lower costs.

If you work at a company where software is a cost center, then I think you should be. Those companies will try to reduce software costs as much as they can. Non-technical executives who don't understand software will be particularly prone to shoving as much AI in as possible. I think this will lead to the same outcome as the first wave of outsourcing - garbage software that opens the door for technical startups to disrupt incumbents.

If you work at a company that sells software products, there is still a lot of value in craftsmanship and experience. AI will be an accelerator for high performing engineers to be able to do their job more effectively

Just gotta keep building things and trying to get that payday, man. There's no other way.

Come on now... Devin is make believe vaporware. It's too bad they didn't use Devin to have a working website;)

But, yes AI will probably get to that level. But, someone has got to oversee and prompt these AI agents.

I'm not. I'm no longer a SWE, but I still write software to support my business. I just can't picture AI solving even the basic hurdles of my work without significant work on my part.

Right now I'm crawling apartment listings across multiple websites. It's tedious work, but it's not challenging. AI can't even figure _that_ out. I can't imagine it sitting in meetings and making sense of complex real world problems.

Nope.

It's nice at implementing simple stuff at a first semester CS student, after somebody over specified it, but that's it.

Code monkeys might want to start looking for a new job in 10-20 years, but you asked about SWEs. And less than 1-10% of our job is to actually type code.

We’re at the “self driving is next year” stage of unfounded hysteria when it comes to AI being a viable replacement for developers. On the surface it may seem around the corner but it’s actually very far away.

We're one year into the hysteria of AI replacing engineers and I have to yet see a company that actually did this sort of thing.

No, these are not able to reason. LLM is not the answer to AGI.