Which software jobs will AI take first?
I had to rephrase the question “Will AI take ALL programmer jobs” into this one because it makes sense. If it’s possible, what types of software developer jobs will be automated by AI or is at risk? Some would say that making decisions on what tools/frameworks a company will use is like the backbone as to why AI isn’t as close to causing a problem. However you can still ask it for pointers if you’re a good prompter and go from there… But anyways what thoughts do you guys have?
19 comments
[ 2100 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadBE will generate FE templates and to wire it up to the API they built
FE, designers are screwed. BE is safe.
I don't see that being automated by language models in the sense of that it would enable the technically unsophisticated designers of today to come up with even an actually deployable UI, let alone one that is maintainable, so that a change in requierements would not lead back to square one.
I'm willing to be a spectator in attempts of business to chase that folly, though. Once systems start to degrade engineering demand will go up.
I like this prediction by Alvin Toffler:
> People of post-industrial society change their profession and their workplace often. People have to change professions because professions quickly become outdated. People of post-industrial society thus have many careers in a lifetime. The knowledge of an engineer becomes outdated in ten years. People look more and more for temporary jobs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock
Instead of "losing" jobs (ok, some tasks of those will be replaced), there will be re-mixed jobs: dev-designers? doctor-programmers? more and more specialized branches of every permutation.
The only way to "lose" jobs, instead of transformed, would be by full AI replacement, which didn't happen in this AI summer.
That said, I think the data engineering aspects will be around for a while. For example integrating outside data, analytical processing.
One domain that won't be heavily affected for a while is gaming. Gaming will only hire more and more AI developers to make the content more interesting/interactive.
rest is biz logic and workflows and those are tough
RoR did this like 15 years ago. I don't see how CRUD is eliminated by LLMs if they weren't eliminated by the hundreds of frameworks and nocode platforms that people have been building forever.
Another angle is that it's based on training data. Something like Android and web changes drastically every damn year. We've seen people applying for jobs and using LLMs; the key indicator is that they're using architecture from 2018 or so.
It hasn't been well trained on game dev, either. Most of these are not benchmarked, so they tend to fly below the radar.
Frontend at higher risk, but other than that it doesn't really matter. If LLMs continue to succeed, no dev field is safe. We might all have to become product managers or systems analysts.
There is nowhere within dev that you can safely pivot to, because the most in-demand fields also have the biggest datasets (from online/PDF content) and if LLMs replace frontend dev roles, it won't be long before they effectively replace or transform backend roles, DevOps, SRE, gamedev, etc. It all largely depends on whether or not we hit a ceiling in the next 2-3 years as the next frontier models are released. If we're still rapidly progressing by then, it won't matter because by the time you've learned a whole new domain, Claude Opus N will be around the corner to catch up to you. If we do hit a ceiling, then it won't matter because, well, we hit a ceiling. So you can stay in your favorite dev field for the time being.
I think there will be an inflection point with things like insurance claim processing, non-sales call centers, help desk/IT (any non-physical elements), time tracking, payroll and HR. Those areas of business are the ones that are cost centers, aka SG&A (sales, general and admin costs) in the corporation's P&L statements. Look at software jobs that support these areas of businesses.
If all the mundane tasks in those areas are mostly handled by AI with consistent, repeatable outputs then its cheaper and changing systems will be faster. The largest cost of changing systems in those areas is re-training staff on a new system. I think this means rapid consolidation of solutions in those areas (i.e. VC/BigTech money scooping up companies).
Especially that anxiety-ignorance type ;)
Reminding these soulless demons on X of this inescapable fact is extremely entertaining. In addition, it's good to remind them:
Corporate journalists are the enemy of the people, and the enemy deserves everything that happens to it.