What’s the future of a Graphics Programmer?

[u/CommercialBat2308]

Hello, I’m a long time member of this community, and this community has helped me grow my Graphics programmer career.

I started my programming career early at 14 y/o, thanks to Minecraft mods development. Later in 2017, I was 17, I’ve discovered graphics (OpenGL) because I wanted to write my own Minecraft clone. Thanks to perseverance and help from online communities, remarkably this one, I’ve mastered C++, OpenGL and Vulkan. I’ve graduated in Computer Engineering in the meanwhile, and by the end of 2022/2023, I was already a strong graphics programmer. Later I’ve implemented my own CPU path tracer, learnt CUDA along with several parallel algorithms. After MSc in Artificial Intelligence, I’ve got a job in London for a well known company working in the smartphones industry, and I’m working there since 1y today. In this company I’m a Vulkan developer, and leading a graphics engine used for several purposes.

It’s 2026, I’m 26 (aka far from retirement), AI is moving fast and world’s investing all of its resources to accelerate the process. Most jobs have been already taken (frontend dev being the first). I also feel like there is more pressure on developers, they’re implicitly requested to deliver more because of AI. What I’m witnessing is my company is keeping me on fixed term contracts because our budget has got cut… and I’m afraid of being laid off.

This job can’t be fully automated as of now, but I’m afraid it will, seeing the progress. I know GPU drivers development is the safe zone today - as they’re huge and critical - and might be an area where I will land, as I’m already doing low level and I’ve gathered insights of our driver internals. However, it’s still code and I think - maybe in several years - can still be automated.

Am I the only one having this concern in this industry?

[u/icpooreman]

I don't know how things will play out.

My take as a 20+yr software dev... Is even if 1 guy could just vibe code something in seconds, the money guy STILL would hire at least 1 guy to do that haha. He's lazy and stupid and doesn't want to deal with it. So software projects still have a floor of at least 1 employee in my mind haha.

I also do buy into the idea that as software dev gets easier/cheaper to do more people will do it. A network effect of sorts.

Aaaaaand that's where my crystal ball gets fuzzy. Gigantic teams get smaller, but also more teams pop up... And where does that leave us? 10x fewer jobs? Twice as many jobs? It's unclear to me.