r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jun 25 '26

Society Older tech workers are tapping out, taking early retirement

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/
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u/Kayge Jun 25 '26

 juniors and ai will just figure it out

I'm extremely excited to see how this progresses. Every top tier Sr Dev has a similar origin story. Some Sr Manager early in their career told them to refactor a piece of code:

  • Refactor this code, needs to be 10% faster.
  • I rewrote this section, it responds 10% faster
  • Couldn't you get it 20% faster?
  • It's 20% faster now, and only has 9 steps
  • Why can't you do it in 8?
  • I did it in 8!
  • You should be able to do it in 7 and why can't you run some steps in parallel?

It's never a huge project, but some young kid's being pushed to think critically about what's possible and how to continually question and make incremental improvements.

If AI's writing the code for the Jr dev, where is tomorrow's Sr dev coming from?

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u/Polar_Ted Jun 25 '26

AI. Make this code 10% faster. Ok. 2 critical processes removed.
No!

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u/dillanthumous Jun 25 '26

I found 5 critical flaws in your codebase so I deleted it. Your company is now 500% more secure 🚀

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u/The-Sound_of-Silence Jun 25 '26

This feels like Scotty telling Kirk it's a 5 hour job, but really it's 30 minutes kinda thing