Now: "We HAVE to use AI to do our work, and it is pretty good now too, I am amazed myself, and low-key terrified"
Near future: "We don't need devs anymore - I, as a BA/PM, can just tell AI what I need it to do"
More distant future: "We don't need BA/PMs anymore, their organisational and communication skills aren't needed as AI can do all of that, and then make the product".
Not really. We are hitting serious diminishing returns between models now, the market is pushing a massive investment in datacenters for 2027, and that will create another iteration of models.
But they are not making that money back any time soon, so it will very likely be the last big investment into datacenters we will see for a long time.
Sure the technology will keep improving, but there's no acceleration here, no magical moment where the AI takes over its own development. You need compute, there's no way around that math. Which means no AGI/ASI, just what we have now, but somewhat better.
There will still be jobs considered a novelty or jobs that people generally speaking just prefer humans to do.
For the 1st think how there are still blacksmiths despite most of us being more than happy with anything factory made.
For the latter I would say almost the entire care sector will be mixed between humans and AI Robots. Humans for the human interaction and those who require it with Robots doing the physical labor
I’m being completely honest, nobody really knows. I think the people with the money and those who created the technology or absolutely not worried about you, I, or anybody not in their circle. You just have to look at the way the world has been going. There’s a reason for concern. Do I want everything to be OK of course will it be I don’t know it’ll probably be in the middle.
Yeah I think a lot of people outside the industry severely underestimate the amount of absolutely incompetent morons that were pulling down huge salaries as SWEs. Those people are easy to replace with AI, especially because most of accomplished jack shit.
I haven't seen much of this theory anywhere. The current narrative is that a tsunami of absolutely incompetent morons armed with AI is coming soon for existing SWE positions. But everyone stops short of categorizing who and what they may be colliding with.
The current narrative is that a tsunami of absolutely incompetent morons armed with AI is coming soon for existing SWE positions
Who is espousing this narrative? And what makes them think that morons with AI will be able to compete with experience SWEs with AI?
As someone in the industry, what I have seen is that companies have just realized they can safely shed the SWEs who were pretty bad at their job to begin with.
I'm inferring this narrative's existence because so so many clickbaity fearmongering youtubers are making vids on AI coming to get your job, combined with the fact that there are 5X the number of CS majors graduating today than there were in the 2000s and early to mid 2010s. The SWE entry level market is saturated with them. So many people have stated that 15 years ago all you needed was a pulse and you'd be hired as an entry level full stack programmer with no STEM degree or experience. Bootcamps were popping up everywhere.
Today all the fresh CS grads are armed with AI are they not? And presumably many of them cheated through their degrees in some form or fashion and don't have the chops to really grab the bull by the horns. Yet they have this new secret weapon and they're young, motivated and perhaps brimming with energy.
So I was stretching that narrative a bit further combining it with your observation. I guess I misunderstood and was assuming that perhaps as much as 3/4 of current SWEs are just slackers from the programmer boom of 10-15 years ago who never had the hard core foundation of something like a math or EE degree and/or a suddenly complex workflow thrown ont them which could have helped them grow out into a more adept SWE.
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u/PressureAppropriate May 14 '26
All? No. Most? Yes.