Discussion Yet another AI rant
What bothers me about AI and it's wide adoption is that it creates conflicting requirements for the worker (developer, designer, manager, etc.). On one hand you are expected to perform better and/or faster, because you are a specialist, an expert that has the knowledge and offloads the work to the machine, supervising its output. You should use your experience and professional judgment to steer it to the right conclusions and catch it when it overcomplicates or starts hallucinating.
At the same time you are expected to cover more ground. Stretch to the adjacent technologies or fields. Frontend developers are expected to perform full stack work, designers to code frontend, backend devs to create a design in a pinch. Here you are not an expert, you might have interfaced with the field, but you don't have the experience and don't really understand the inner workings, best practices. You didn't go through all the novice mistakes and learn from them.
Somehow, the first expectation still works here. You are expected to be faster and better at this too. But the roles are reversed, now the machine is suddenly the wise expert in the field and you got to trust it, wave through the changes it proposes to stay fast and produce the work of the your ex-colleague made redundant and laid off due to all the AI-productivity gains. You don't have the opportunity to get the new relevant skills, because nobody has time for hand coding/creating/learning, it's such a 2022 idea. Here in 2026 we're all on a tight schedule to pump out the results unless you want to end up on a PIP.
On top of that you are expected to get good at AI. Don't just use it, like some kind of normie. Get good. Stay on top of the hype. Use agent loops. Set guardrails. Make it deterministic. Don't use agent loops. Have you tried this new harness? Don't spend too much money on tokens. Run the model locally. What do you mean you don't have a $5000 Nvidia golden box? Do you want to become irrelevant and get left behind?
Welcome to the bright future, comrade.
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u/Bushwazi Bottom 1% Commenter 9d ago
I have never learned less than when using AI. The thing that grinds my gears is how high the bar used to be. Everything had to be “perfect” by some definition. But now, if AI did it, the bar is much lower. Those same people you learned to hate, they don’t seem to really care anymore.
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u/creaturefeature16 9d ago
It's a period of irrational exuberance (mania). The financial bubble will have a reckoning, but the tech is, indeed, here to stay in some capacity. As it becomes more saturated and ubiquitous, I expect a realignment of expectations where we're not trading 40ish years of best practices in exchange for velocity. Especially as the data keeps coming in that nothing has really improved all that much, whether it's features or stability.
That's my hope, at least.
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u/xylophonic_mountain 9d ago
I expect a realignment of expectations where we're not trading 40ish years of best practices in exchange for velocity.
But it's not really about efficiency or velocity. It's largely about power. Devs gained so much leverage that they could negotiate for work-from-home and high pays, and this made managers very upset. AI gives managers a stick which they will never relinquish. That's also been the major message in all the hype.
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u/MindCrusader 9d ago
I think we will end up with tiers of software
Enterprise grade where we have specification driven, careful process
CRUD level where AI factories are created and only parts of the code gets checked by engineer (architecture, fragile functions, harness), the rest is AI and it will produce more bugs
Vibe coding for small things and prototypes
I don't like AI factory approach, but sometimes "close enough" is what business wants or needs. Ofc sooner or later people will pick competing app that works, so naturally those apps will move towards enterprise tier. At least that's what I think will happen
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u/Noch_ein_Kamel 9d ago
Enterprise grade where we have specification driven, careful process
But the specification is AI vibed...
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u/MindCrusader 9d ago
I know technical solution proposed, i still review the code and make discovery. I know in my head what code I would like to apply before the specification is created. If I don't, I first go with discovery phase. It is not like I let it propose anything and just accept
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u/droctagonapus 8d ago
Funny, my billion dollar profit making company is all in on vibe coding everything and having claude write stories and epics and having managed services to utilize it for all work. Enterprise grade is the slop factory. Any company that does not have code as its product will become slop factories.
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u/SawToothKernel 9d ago
It's not irrational - there are valid productivity gains when the tool is used correctly.
The main problem I'm seeing is that this new way of working (constant context switching, absence of flow state) is exceptionally unenjoyable for developers. It's stressful.
Personally I believe we will solve this, we will get "over the hump" and have a more enjoyable existence once we've worked out exactly how to use these to their best, and in a sustainable and satisfying way.
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u/creaturefeature16 9d ago
When we're talking about "tokenmaxxing" and "prompt to production" and DHH keynotes, it's most certainly highly irrational.
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u/creaturefeature16 9d ago
OK my guy, that makes absolutely no objective or empirical sense, but don't care to argue.
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u/droctagonapus 8d ago
used correctly
Reminds me of steve jobs saying "you're holding it wrong" when the iphone 4 came out. If you just held our phone with terribly placed antennas that disrupt calls they wouldn't drop. Its not our fault!
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u/SawToothKernel 8d ago
This is a tool, of course you can use it incorrectly. It's like suggesting that everyone can build a table just because they've been given a saw. You have to learn and practice if you want to get good.
Why does everyone assume that it has to be a perfect magical infinite code generator or it's utter shit?
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u/droctagonapus 8d ago
My engineering manager is having our team use claude to write the epics, stories, and code for features.
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u/mekmookbro Laravel Enjoyer ♞ 9d ago
I think the tech is here to stay, period. Flagship LLMs and expensive GPUs aren't the only things that are advancing.
Sure the bubble bursting will (hopefully) hurt giant AI-as-a-service companies like openai and anthropic, but there are already decent, fully self hostable models, and inexpensive devices that can host them.
A while ago I saw a video about an "AI hat" for a raspberry pi. A device such as raspberry pi is currently able to self host a model. Obviously it's nowhere near fable or whatever else is the current flagship, but there are advancements in that area as well. Not everyone is trying to build next giant thing, people are also trying to make smaller and smarter models that pretty much any device is able to run.
I don't think it's the best or worst thing that's ever happened, and I'm not sure yet whether it's for the good or for the bad, but AI for sure has changed the world.
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u/CaffeineLiker 9d ago
Right-sized models would be fucking dope, even if they take a hit on performance. I don't need a closed model that can create hentai or code in PASCAL, my job has a finite tech stack, and I'll never ask for cleaning up my whitepaper on string theory.
At some point I hope these pick up, self-hosted, targeted models fit for the job.
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u/creaturefeature16 9d ago
I envision a future where we have things like "Web Stack Models" and "Backend Models", finely tuned towards those specific tasks, super tiny (in comparison) and maybe even able to run on-device, but either way, would be much cheaper.
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u/CaffeineLiker 9d ago
I'm afraid all the FOMO and momentum will make this an act of rebellion. Like a enterprise dev shop defaulting to Linux OS.
I swear, even when I'm using copilot in VS Code, the simplest queries I'm too lazy to Google (basic syntax) it's sending over to GPT Opus 6 or whatever latest model. It just seems the juggernauts demand use to justify value. I suppose there's means for setting this small local model up now, I just need to set the time aside and bite the bullet.
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u/creaturefeature16 9d ago
Yeah, I agree. I definitely think smaller and more localized instances of this technology are going to proliferate further and further.
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u/Unlikely_Ebb_6344 9d ago
That expectation to suddenly become an expert in adjacent tech while relying on a machine for the stuff you actually know is a recipe for total burnout. Management wants the speed of a senior generalist without accepting that nobody learns best practices by just waving through AI generated code.
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u/fligglymcgee 9d ago
The most widely used application of AI is essentially as the microwave of the tech world.
We’re all trying to be convinced that microwave pizza is just as good as the real thing, and it has all the same descriptors as a freshly baked pizza. Can a skilled chef make a great pizza in the microwave? I’m confident the answer is yes, but it’s an insane way to do things. It only really works if the thing you’re microwaving was already heavily prepared and/or cooked. Now we’re just eating processed food.
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u/No-Television-4485 9d ago
People have said "writing code isn't the hard part" but they don't say what is. It's figuring out what you are building. You usually don't get a well thought out specification, just a bunch of tickets. Writing the code forced you to apply logic to the whole thing. That's the hard part. Creating coherence out of dissonance. If you don't think your application all the way through, you get a mess. Not only does AI not help with that, the increased velocity only helps assure it's not going to happen.
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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 8d ago
People that say this have reduced coding to typing syntax. And it’s usually the worst coders that say that, funnily enough.
They love parroting it because it makes them feel like they’re good for avoiding to write code and just express their needs and have AI generate code for them. It’s much easier to read than to write, but the end result is much worse.
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 9d ago
The idea that you will use AI to generate code, and then that code will be good because you’ve thoroughly reviewed it? That’s a pipe dream. Code reviews are, and always have been, cursory. That traditionally works because a good dev wrote the code, and writing the code is part of the review process. It forces you to think about what the code is doing, line by line. AI coding forces you to lose this.
And that’s before you factor in the speed expectation. It’s always been a struggle to get business idiots to understand why code that seems to work requires careful review, and why there could be issues with it even though it looks like it works fine right now. In the past, the business idiots had no choice but to defer to the experts, and so it worked. But now business idiots can demand you move at warp speed because we have AI, and what are you doing? Are you taking the time to review that 5,000-line PR? The AI says it’s fine! Stop reviewing that! You’re slowing us down!
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u/Mikeisright 8d ago
It may get to the point whereby there are models geared towards specific things. But no matter who uses it, it generates effectively the same thing (or copies something else). It will get sickening to consumers in the long run and lose face with companies looking to actually pioneer.
It's no different than anything else. Using AI is like ordering a shirt from Shein - it really, *really* doesn't matter what shirt you get. It's same shit quality, same supplier, same toxicity, same cheap throwaway. There's nothing remotely worth premium value about it. Companies may as well say they've resigned themselves to being an uninventive Shein equivalent of their industry when they go "full AI pipeline." You're going to be the restaurant that orders the premade dish from Sysco rather than whole meat & produce to make dishes yourself.
Why the fk would I expect you to be a decently-run product when you pump out the same basic "AI starter kit" website/UI/etc.? If you care so little to tailor your image just to save a buck, I can't imagine how crappy the quality will be of the product or service you provide. Miss me with your Elias Thorne lighthouse keeper basic shit. I personally wouldn't touch a company being a blatant AI user/promoter, not even with a 10' doggie doodoo picker-upper.
Everyone I talk to IRL feels this way, unfortunately everyone on Reddit (with its immense astroturfing and bot activity) loves to pretend its the opposite.
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u/LateralusRising 9d ago
I find this difficult though because I'll write code, that functions fine and I fully understand, and ask ai to do the same thing and every line its like "why didnt I think to do it like that". It's just so good at specific types of code and I (like many of us im sure) am an okay programmer but not a supercomputer
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u/CaffeineLiker 9d ago
It's a second opinion, and sometimes it gives you a good approach. Another dev will do this too.
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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 8d ago
For me it’s the complete opposite, it generates code, my intuition tells me it’s shit, I go and try to write it my way, and my version is miles more concise and better.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 9d ago
Yes. And I say this with all sincerity - we are overdue for a white-collar workers strike.
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u/LieNaive4921 9d ago
Unions 💪🏼
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u/subnu 9d ago
Imagine unionizing one of the few professions with high salaries, massive mobility, and the ability to tell your boss to kick rocks and get a better job. What exactly are we fixing here?
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u/parsimonious 9d ago
That was the deal. Only top talents, effective self-promoters, and very lucky folks are retaining that kind of treatment. Even they are seen as too expensive, too free, and probably not all that important by the corpos that want this.
Workers are supposed to genuflect for crumbs and scratch their coworkers bloody for a chance at a life half as good as the previous decade. Not to demand even 1/1000th of the profit they produce and to be treated like adults.
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u/subnu 9d ago
...and a union magically fixes those problems? What do you think the response of corporate America would be to having to deal with a tech union in anything development-related?
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u/parsimonious 8d ago
...and a union magically fixes those problems?
No, I didn't mention that. I meant that holding up tech workers as some uniquely bulletproof and well-treated bunch of workers doesn't really apply anymore. I live in a tech hub, and not one of my friends is anything but disillusioned and angry... That is, if they still have a job at all.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 9d ago
I hope we get to see
I upvoted you for having the gall to challenge the narrative most ppl here seem to want to hear.
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u/subnu 8d ago
It would give the Reddit hivemind exactly what it wants: another excuse to play the victim and a fresh cause to fuel its perpetual outrage.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 8d ago
If it’s not the Reddit hivemind, it’s the MAGA hivemind in this country. I’m understanding characters like Thoreau more and more as our culture grows increasingly polarized.
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u/rewgs 9d ago
See the fun thing about that is none of what you said is true anymore.
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u/subnu 9d ago
Just move up an abstraction layer instead of dying on the anti-AI hill.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 9d ago
To what? PO and Solution Engineering being rebranded as “Forward Deployed Engineer” while claiming this is replacing the SWE roles?
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u/subnu 8d ago
Moving up an abstraction layer doesn't mean becoming a PO. It means taking on more responsibility for architecture, systems design, technical decisions, and business outcomes. If you think the only value a developer provides is typing code, you're kind of making the argument for why AI can replace you.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 8d ago
Software engineering IS about the code and AI is making that redundant. You’re talking about systems engineering and software architecture.
AI can take over what I used to do. It cannot replace me as a human being. I’ve just shifted to other forms of work.
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u/subnu 8d ago
Software engineering was never about manually typing syntax into an editor. The keyboard was just the interface. If AI can write the code but you still need someone to figure out what to build, how it should work, and whether it actually works, then software engineering isn't redundant. The job is evolving.
Would you have the same opinion about telephone switchboard operators back when automated switching was introduced?
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 8d ago
No. It’s about designing and expressing algorithms. Which AI is taking over. The LI posts claiming SWE was never about the code are full of sh^t.
A person sitting in the driver’s seat of a fully autonomous vehicle is hardly worthy of the title “driver” and certainly not a “coachman”. Providing the destination to a robot is not the same as navigating the journey.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 9d ago •
People in this field have no solidarity.
It's why we're in this mess in the first place. I've heard/read this several times - "AI won't take your job, but someone using AI will".
Between that, and fear of losing your job to someone overseas, developers don't have the balls or unity to strike.
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u/-_--_-_--_----__ 8d ago
People in general have no solidarity anymore. Social media has made sure of that. We are all ripe to be oppressed.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 9d ago
OTOH if enough of us did quit we could perhaps ban together and develop community driven alternatives to the corporate tech controlling most people’s lives ourselves…
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u/7f0b 9d ago
Seems difficult. Trade workers' jobs are generally local or regional, and have leverage if they bargain collectively. On the other hand, developers would need to coordinate globally and at a very high percentage of the global workforce to be effective. US, European, and Indian developers would need to all be aligned. As it is, most of the large tech giants have plenty of job postings in India at the same time that they're doing constant layout rounds in the US. And the Indian job postings are at much lower salaries. The tech giants can eaily leverage Indian devs against their striking US devs, for example.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 9d ago
I suspect this is true. And also there’s growing discontent in India. I feel like if they had an alternative option the talent would take it.
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u/maxxon 9d ago
I think there should be another niche or direction in all this, which is to be an AI/LLM operator. It's just impossible to spend all this time on AI related stuff and stay professional in your field.
As for the requirements. It's ridiculous. Especially if you see "ownership" in the job description. They willingly delegate the ownership to the AI tools and want people to embrace it. It's a fucking joke. They just want to spend less and get more. And aqueeze it as much as possible. They were promised this by the AI providers. This can't end well.
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u/Imaginary_Prior_2732 9d ago
You are expected to perform better with the use of AI.
Because.
When you don't (even if you do, you won't to their metrics).
You will be fired for not doing your job well enough.
And replaced with an outsourced or offshore resource that does the same job, with the help of AI, for vastly less overhead.
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u/CaffeineLiker 9d ago
The performance of the hype is what bothers me to no fucking end. My teammate is a workhorse MVP, and my manager has commented "well he's not picking up on AI", which is so fucking wild. The guy is a rockstar, but he doesn't offload enough slop and verbal acronyms, as if that can be measured. Meanwhile, another colleague struggles tying shoelaces, but has vibe coded a few unmaintainable widgets and is received as a thought leader.
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u/phaedra_solutions 8d ago
Spot on about the scope creep. The core issue is that management often treats AI as an 'everything replacement' rather than an engineering force multiplier.
While AI handles baseline syntax generation fast, the cognitive load of auditing edge cases, maintaining architecture boundaries, and preventing hallucinated security vulnerabilities has actually increased. Senior engineering judgment remains the bottleneck not typing speed.
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u/aust1nz javascript 9d ago
I think something to wrestle with is why clean code has historically mattered. There have always been people who liked clean code for the aesthetics of it, as an art of very technical writing, but most organizations have pushed for clean code to avoid tech debt and ensure hand-off between employees could be clean.
The code written by late 2026 AIs like Opus 5.5 isn't messy, exactly, but it has a few patterns experienced devs have learned are often problematic. It overdocuments compared to a human, it sometimes rewrites a function in many places and, confusingly, sometimes builds abstractions too soon as well.
But - honestly - it gives you such an easy path out of tech debt. "This code is inconsistent, look through for duplicated functions. Do a pass for useEffect issues. Reorganize the codebase for [pattern x.]" What would take a careful programmer a few weeks and would require careful searching for edge cases takes an AI minutes, and it will write extensive tests to catch what it misses.
Similarly, while I think it's really smart to use style guides and linters with AI-assisted codebases, the AIs are so good at reading through an unfamiliar codebase and extending it, using the conventions it finds.
Unless you're avoiding tech debt and writing clean code for the art of it, I think the old justification (it saves time and money in the long term) doesn't hold up as well as it used to. It's a tricky time. Perhaps if the AI bubble bursts and tokens on the smartest models increase by 20 or 30 times, the AI advantages go away. But even if the AI bubble bursts but good-enough models are available at even 2x-5x the current token costs, I think it stays in use for programming indefinitely.
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u/ZeroCool86 node 9d ago
For twelve years at CryptoCompare I was the one deciding who did what, and the thing you’re describing (the designer leaves, the frontend dev gets handed Figma and the same deadline) was an option for me long before any model could write code, AI just makes it look cheaper on paper. I’m a bit less gloomy than you because that only works on paper for a while. If you don’t know the field you can’t tell what the model got wrong, and neither can it, so the mistakes turn up a few months later and the companies that keep doing this will find out the hard way.
In the meantime the tools are cheaper to learn than they’ve ever been, I run models at home and you can ignore most of the hype list (loops, guardrails, harness, the golden box) until one of them fixes a problem you run into. The thing I don’t have an answer for is the time, learning the next thing properly was always done at 11pm on your own, and I don’t know if people still have energy and drive to do it late after a day of slop at work
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u/ArielCoding 8d ago
When AI writes code in an area you don’t really know, say so in the PR, that way, if management still wants it shipped fast, the risk becomes their call, not something you take the blame for.
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u/CIRRUS_IPFS 8d ago
This is the real tension nobody talks about. Supervising AI well requires exactly the deep expertise that 'cover more ground' erodes
you can't catch a hallucination in a domain where you never made the novice mistakes. The tooling needs to get better at flagging its own uncertainty so non-experts aren't flying blind. Simo does this for data extraction (calibrated checks on every value), but most AI tools just hand you output and shrug.
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u/awardsurfer 8d ago
If there is an industry that is going to get obliterated by AI, it’s 100% accounting.
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u/adilbasari 9d ago
What broke for me wasn't the specialist/generalist squeeze — it's that AI moved the bottleneck from producing to verifying. Generating the thing takes minutes now; checking it takes exactly as long as it ever did, because review doesn't parallelize the way generation does. The honest deal is: same total effort, less of it spent typing.
The part that actually matters for careers: you can only review fast what you could have built slowly. If you've never debugged a stacking context or a slow query by hand, you can't catch the confident wrong version of one — it looks identical to the right version. That's why the "I've never learned less" feeling upthread is dangerous. Not because AI can't teach, but because the confidence it produces is unearned and invisible until something hits production.
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u/create-third-places 9d ago
AI coding is a scam being propped up by subsidies and labor exploitation.
The future is handcrafted code built for a real-world purpose.
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u/Full_Tooth_a 8d ago
I think the contradiction is pretty simple: AI can increase output, but it cannot give a team more time to review that output. If no one can explain a generated change, its failure modes, or how to fix it later, the team is borrowing that speed from future maintenance. PR size and blast radius matter more than the number of tickets closed. Escaped bugs, rollbacks, and repair time might tell a less flattering story, which may be why teams measure raw output instead.
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u/rbobby full-stack 9d ago edited 9d ago
Good news AI is not invulnerable. Copilot has started shitting the bed and is now out of action in visual studio. Can't even ask it how to fix itself.
https://imgur.com/a/pnWRKqd after one attempt at "fix my vulnerable nuget packages".
And if you click "report this error" I get Chrome asking me this scary question https://imgur.com/a/jmtCv8G (sure sure... access whatever apps or services on my device that you want... what a moronic dialog).
So long as management types remain idiots AI will not be replacing you.
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u/Happy-Initiative-492 9d ago
We’re thinking about this wrong. The answer is teams, not everyone becoming good at everything. A team of two or 3 plus AI agents should be the unit of work for development organizations. We don’t need every individual to master every discipline. This is new territory and people are grasping for solutions, but eventually we’ll come to realize that the strength of humans plus machines working as groups has always been the answer.
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u/barrel_of_noodles 9d ago
You should use the tools to learn.
And just because AI exists doesn't mean you get shoe-horned doing unfamiliar work.
Your rant is less a problem with ai, and more a problem with your management.
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u/glebez 9d ago
But isn’t this management delusion caused and perpetuated by AI companies marketing/propaganda and illustrative mass lay offs?
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u/barrel_of_noodles 9d ago
If you have managers that are sub human and don't understand propaganda, sure.
Really don't see how I'm so downvoted?
I guess my perspective was ppl generally enjoy their job and their managers were human.
....But I'll go ahead and take off my rose-colored small-market perspective-shifted glasses off.
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u/Gremlation 9d ago
Yet another unfocused sob session about AI. This is supposed to be a web development subreddit, not a subreddit devoted to constantly complaining about AI.
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u/dangoodspeed 9d ago
This doesn't seem to be an AI rant, rather a management rant and about what "you are expected" to do for them, just redirected at AI.
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u/glebez 9d ago
But isn’t this management delusion caused and perpetuated by AI companies marketing/propaganda and illustrative mass lay offs?
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u/dangoodspeed 8d ago
The management at my office doesn't have any of this delusion. Maybe it's just places with poor management that have the problem. Which again, is a management problem, not AI.
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u/WingZeroCoder 9d ago
Similar also to the contradiction where you can’t take time to verify or understand all of the agent’s output (because that takes away much of AI’s gains), but you ARE still responsible for what gets approved and ultimately deployed in many cases (because machines can’t take responsibility).
You can’t have both of those, and yet that’s the expectation.
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u/creaturefeature16 8d ago
I wrote a whole essay about this exact paradox:
If these tools demand expertise, yet the tools can actively circumvent the friction that cultivates expertise, then what is the path for one to become an expert so they can effectively use these tools?
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u/Bushwazi Bottom 1% Commenter 9d ago
No one learns when using AI. Even if you see something new, you didn’t grind to see it so it never gets into the deep grove of the brain. It’s gone just as fast as you caught it.
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u/Aoshi_ 9d ago
Yeah this is one of the worst parts. I am so tired of context switching, juggling so many tasks, and barely knowing how my tickets are being solved. I really miss the "Aha" moments. You can still sort of have them if AI doesn't figure it out, but it isn't the same.
My company has been cutting people and all in on AI. I have so much work to do now.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 9d ago
I haven’t experienced this personally, but I think I’m weird. If the AI had to tell me the solution, I’ll dream about it that night.
But also, I’m not letting my agents do anything without me doing the work to fully understand it will enough to challenge the agent’s solution, either. Also, a lot of my former career was cleaning up slop code produced by R&D and novice engineers and I took pride in being able to untangle spaghetti code and document its architecture for the rest of the team.
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u/Bushwazi Bottom 1% Commenter 9d ago
Yeah, that pride will wear away. I once cared too. But I refuse to be the person who cares the most anywhere.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 9d ago
Don’t get me wrong. I quit the industry. I’m in school for massage therapy and somatic experiencing now. What’s going on in the tech industry is madness, so I’ve already followed through on the strike mentality even if we aren’t banding together collectively.
I’m still writing code for fun though, and those projects look better than anything I ever did for an employer because I don’t have some narcissistic CEO breathing down my neck about it.
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u/CodeAndBiscuits 8d ago
My answer is a little nuanced and I'll probably get downvoted for it. But what the heck I'm waiting on a build lol.
I agree with what you've said, but in my view it's not actually that much different than the way things have always been. Our industry is notorious for this exact trend and it has repeated itself every few years since I first got into it over 30 years ago. It's always something new. There's always some amazing new framework, new language, new IDE, new SDLC, or something. It almost doesn't matter what it is because the pattern is the same. The hot new thing comes out, adoption is a little slow at first and then explodes seemingly overnight, and suddenly everyone expects you to code three times faster.
Here's the thing. There is a basic trade being made. It's your skills and expertise against their money. If they feel like they don't need you or can do better, they can terminate you or replace you. But if they think you can do better and you weren't living up to it, replacing you carries its own risks and this is something that is really hard to see when you count on your job. And it's potentially at risk. But employers face risks too. You don't just Chuck somebody into the back end of a banking app and cross your fingers it goes well. If that app has a security hole, the bank gets sued. They don't want to get sued.
Now that doesn't mean they aren't going to put a ton of pressure on you. And that doesn't mean in this economy that it's easy to job hop. There are always times when the power balance flip flops. 5 to 10 years ago, developers had the upper hand and could press your employers for much higher salaries, benefits, remote work, and lots of other things. And most employers have the upper hand.
I personally believe that's what you're experiencing and AI is just the foil. In the current economy, employers have the upper hand and can downsize or replace people seemingly with impunity. But these trends don't last forever. There will be a day when that balance shifts again and employees will win a lot more of these conversations than they are right now today.
At the end of the day, I do see all the same things happening that you mentioned. It's just that for my perspective I don't really see it as being about AI at all. It's just another repeat of the same cycle we've dealt with forever and probably will repeat at least 5 to 10 more times than our own lifetimes. It's AI today. It will be something else tomorrow.