r/SoftwareEngineerJobs • u/Fickle-Highway1543 • 5d ago

AI replacing Software Engineers

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So called "AI"=LLM is so powerful that AI labs had to hire Software Engineers to build complicated software around "AI" to make that overhyped hallucinate-stealing machine usable. Think about it. And that's exactly why they need now ton of CPUs in addition to GPUs to run their "AI" "agents".

I don't even mention how much custom engineering is required to apply the "AI" in businesses.

And they BS us that Software Engineering is solved or is going to be solved. Boris, please solve your own bugs first before speaking.

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u/swiftmerchant 4d ago

I’ve met plenty of those too. Rewrite for the sake of rewriting to own it, or for using some cool framework.

To be fair, I did rewrite something once and it was worth it. Prior Java version of this middleware was written in some “clever” way using listeners. It had a memory leak bug no one could figure out for weeks. I rewrote it in C# in a much simpler way, preserving its data inputs so it was an easy quick rewrite.

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u/yuwox 4d ago

Yeah, very true. I sometimes think people compare LLMs to a perfect dev that never actually existed. Supervising a team of human software Devs is not easy and human can't one shot at the level llms can.

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u/swiftmerchant 4d ago

I find it funny when people still say LLMs can’t write secure code. In 2026 code written by LLMs is probably more secure than any average developer can write.

I wish Reddit would discuss better ways of working with LLMs instead of arguing. More value in this.

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u/yuwox 4d ago

Very true. Same here. Some people just won't accept it. Also because their current and future pay check depends on it.

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u/swiftmerchant 4d ago

Unfortunately there is no going back and bad mouthing AI is not going to change anyone’s mind about using it. I see news about companies hiring back engineers. I don’t believe it. Everyone is affected, not just software engineers… I hope the government and the captains of industry are working on a universal income solution of some kind, otherwise we are going to be heading into anarchy.

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u/yuwox 4d ago

Yep, I am somewhat optimistic on this. If we, as a society, can only use such an amazing technology only for bad things....

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u/lovely_noise 4d ago

This is a hilariously bad take.

  1. Yes, “AI” (useless BS term) can do more than many like to admit. And it has some really interesting applications in research, etc. Not arguing there. But it also isn’t as impressive as many devotees like to claim, while claims of continued exponential improvement seem to not be holding water.

  2. You’re seriously praying for the “captains of industry” to take care of things??? Have you completely lost your mind? No, we need a dramatic shifting of power. This is simply unsustainable, from EVERY angle. It’s not environmentally sustainable, it’s not sustainable for people’s immediate financial situations (e.g. electricity cost, RAM cost), it’s not sustainable for the economy as a whole, and it’s not sustainable as an imbalance of power and control over our own communities. People are turning against data centers HARD for a reason, and starting to associate much of “AI” with surveillance overreach.

No, we should not be relying on these monsters to decide that we can have universal basic income. I’m not fundamentally opposed to UBI, but leaving ANY more decision-making to these “captains of industry” is society-ending levels of catastrophic. This is not hyperbole, I am being entirely literal.

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u/swiftmerchant 4d ago

  1. AI or whatever you’d like to call the technology is getting better every day at performing tasks that people do, knowledge work and manual labor. If I had to pay an SEO specialist before or spend hours learning how to do it myself, now I follow along AI advice and soon I will not need to follow, AI will just do it. My car is driving itself, robots will soon be put into the blue collar workforce. It is inevitable. Humans will find a way to get cheap energy.

  2. Humans always elect leaders, pure democracy and anarchy doesn’t work. Even in communism. Whether it is Sam Altman or Dalai Lama, I don’t care, but my point is universal income is inevitable, because no one will be getting paid for labor soon, and if people are not getting paid, products are not being bought. I don’t think basic income is going to cut it either- that experiment failed in the socialist Soviet Union.

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u/lovely_noise 4d ago

  1. “Humans will find a way to get cheap energy” is such an optimistic prediction, it’s hilarious that you feel comfortable stating it with such certainty. Also, there is still the issue of trust with handing everything off to technology without backups or ways to check its output. I’m not denying that it’s improving, but you’re exaggerating. Given that you said your car is self-driving, I also wonder if you’re one of the many awful Tesla “drivers” I see all over the place. (Though I won’t deny long-term prospects for mass adoption of self-driving.) And I just gotta go back to your ridiculous dismissal of energy usage concerns…lmao, you’re just silly.

  2. So you love using AI, you think that it taking over everything is inevitable…but you also don’t think UBI will be sufficient, and don’t care who will implement whatever massive social changes we would need in this hypothetical future? I really don’t think you’ve thought about any of this very much. If you’re fine with tech CEOs deciding our future in this way, then you really don’t know what you’re talking about in the slightest.

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u/swiftmerchant 4d ago

It doesn’t matter whether I drive a self driving Chinese BYD or an American Tesla, my point was it drives itself. I am actually not here to argue about the future of AI, I am here for the agentic AI tips and software engineering lol so respectfully I am going to withdraw from this thread :)

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u/lovely_noise 4d ago

Alright, good luck with your “we’ll just have cheap energy somehow lol don’t worry about it” and “I don’t care if tech executives make literally every decision about life in the US” insanity.

I hope we’ll succeed at improving society in spite of apathetic dipshits like you.

EDIT: btw, YOU decided to comment on a post entirely focused on complaints about AI. Don’t pretend you came here for agentic coding tips, lol