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Software developers should be worried about their jobs, not because these tools are capable of replacing them or reducing a company’s need for human developers,

by teucris 8mo ago

Software developers should be worried about their jobs, not because these tools are capable of replacing them or reducing a company’s need for human developers, but rather because the _perception_ that they can/will replace developers is causing a major disruption in hiring practices. I truly don’t know how this is going to play out. Will the software industry just be a total mess until agents can actually replace developers? Or will companies come to their senses and learn that they still need to hire humans - just humans that know how to use agents to augment their work?

thefourthchime 8mo ago
Software development hiring is terrible right now, but hiring has been pretty slow in general. We gained 2 million jobs in 2024 and only 500,000 in 2025.
AstroBen 8mo ago
That can't possibly be a long term disruption. If it doesn't work it doesn't work If AI can't replace developers, companies can't replace developers with it. They can try — and then they'll be met with the reality. Good or bad
- teucris 8mo ago
  You may be right if AI truly can never replace devs. But history shows many examples of inadequate technologies getting hammered on by industry until they work due to distorted perceptions of economic gain. I’ve heard stories like this regarding mechanical looms, CNC, and cloud services. My understanding is those all work (decently) now not because they were obviously better, but because economic pressure pushed innovation to make them work, for better or worse.
rekabis 8mo ago
> the _perception_ that they can/will replace developers is causing a major disruption in hiring practices. Bingo. And it’s causing the careers of a majority of juniors to experience fatal delays. Juniors need to leap into their careers and build up a good head of steam by demonstrating acquired experience, or they will wander off into other industries and fail to acquire said experience. And when others who haven’t even gone through training yet see how juniors have an abysmally hard time finding a job, this will discourage them from even considering the industry before they ever begin to learn how to code. But when no-one is hiring such that even students reconsider their career choice, this “failure to launch” will cause a massive developer shortage in the next 5-15 years, to the point where I believe entire governments will have this as a policy pain point. After all, when companies are loathe to actually conduct any kind of on-the-job training, and demand 2-5 years of experience in an whole IT department’s worth of skills for “entry level” jobs, an entire generation of potential applicants with a fraction of that (or none at all) will cause the industry to have figurative kittens. I mean, it will be the industry’s own footgun that has hurt them so badly. I would posit it may even become a leggun. The schadenfreude will be copious and well-deserved. But it’s going to produce massive amounts of economic pain.
- phtrivier 8mo ago
  > Juniors need to leap into their careers and build up a good head of steam by demonstrating acquired experience, Junior devs at least have the option of building a portfolio of usefully software on their own machine at home, while eating ramens. They can build websites for mom'n'pop stores. They can participate into open source projects. Etc, etc... I dread the people who won't get jobs into other fields because managers have been told by corporate that "we don't need people, chatgpt can do everything".
  - teucris 8mo ago
    > while eating ramens For many, even cutting their budget isn’t enough to pursue what you’re describing. Modern careers in software are very hard to reach for people who can’t afford to wait for a real paycheck, and it drives away a massive group of potential talent.
  - rekabis 8mo ago
    > Junior devs at least have the option of building a portfolio of usefully software on their own machine at home, while eating ramens. Bold of you to assume today’s young adults can live without a steady paycheque that doesn’t suck up 40-80hrs of their time a week. I mean, how else will that roof end up over their heads? And most parents have been brainwashed to believe that any child not living on their own once they become adults are failures, and still need to be kicked out of the house such that they are forced to learn self-sufficiency. AFAICT, most parents of adult offspring have zero clue about how bad things actually are out there, with most still telling their children to go from business to business with printed-off Résumés. Outside of blue-collar jobs, I haven’t seen this work for a good twenty years, now.
    - phtrivier 8mo ago
      I'm probably picturing "junior" as "people still in college preparing to get their first job". My point is that a luxury of the software engineering craft is that you can practice "at pro level" very cheaply. Even as a teenager, learning and using vscode/python/react/etc... on your own is a possibility. Learning Salesforce and SAP and the internal support tool of BigCo is not. That being said, I completely agree that we're going to put a generation of "wannabee white collar" in a dire situation. Cynically, this might be an overdue correction from the years of "college degree for everyone", and maybe (just maybe) some people will actually thrive in the "hard-to-llm-ize" profession if they can retrain. (If the market laws apply, someone will build "turn advertisement-copy writers into electricians", and it would not necessarily be for the worst ? I know, easy to tell for me, who got the opposite deal by being a software engineer on demand at the right time at the beginning of my career.)

by teucris 8mo ago

thefourthchime 8mo ago

Software development hiring is terrible right now, but hiring has been pretty slow in general. We gained 2 million jobs in 2024 and only 500,000 in 2025.

AstroBen 8mo ago

That can't possibly be a long term disruption. If it doesn't work it doesn't work If AI can't replace developers, companies can't replace developers with it. They can try — and then they'll be met with the reality. Good or bad

teucris 8mo ago
You may be right if AI truly can never replace devs. But history shows many examples of inadequate technologies getting hammered on by industry until they work due to distorted perceptions of economic gain. I’ve heard stories like this regarding mechanical looms, CNC, and cloud services. My understanding is those all work (decently) now not because they were obviously better, but because economic pressure pushed innovation to make them work, for better or worse.

rekabis 8mo ago

> the _perception_ that they can/will replace developers is causing a major disruption in hiring practices. Bingo. And it’s causing the careers of a majority of juniors to experience fatal delays. Juniors need to leap into their careers and build up a good head of steam by demonstrating acquired experience, or they will wander off into other industries and fail to acquire said experience. And when others who haven’t even gone through training yet see how juniors have an abysmally hard time finding a job, this will discourage them from even considering the industry before they ever begin to learn how to code. But when no-one is hiring such that even students reconsider their career choice, this “failure to launch” will cause a massive developer shortage in the next 5-15 years, to the point where I believe entire governments will have this as a policy pain point. After all, when companies are loathe to actually conduct any kind of on-the-job training, and demand 2-5 years of experience in an whole IT department’s worth of skills for “entry level” jobs, an entire generation of potential applicants with a fraction of that (or none at all) will cause the industry to have figurative kittens. I mean, it will be the industry’s own footgun that has hurt them so badly. I would posit it may even become a leggun. The schadenfreude will be copious and well-deserved. But it’s going to produce massive amounts of economic pain.

phtrivier 8mo ago
> Juniors need to leap into their careers and build up a good head of steam by demonstrating acquired experience, Junior devs at least have the option of building a portfolio of usefully software on their own machine at home, while eating ramens. They can build websites for mom'n'pop stores. They can participate into open source projects. Etc, etc... I dread the people who won't get jobs into other fields because managers have been told by corporate that "we don't need people, chatgpt can do everything".
- teucris 8mo ago
  > while eating ramens For many, even cutting their budget isn’t enough to pursue what you’re describing. Modern careers in software are very hard to reach for people who can’t afford to wait for a real paycheck, and it drives away a massive group of potential talent.
- rekabis 8mo ago
  > Junior devs at least have the option of building a portfolio of usefully software on their own machine at home, while eating ramens. Bold of you to assume today’s young adults can live without a steady paycheque that doesn’t suck up 40-80hrs of their time a week. I mean, how else will that roof end up over their heads? And most parents have been brainwashed to believe that any child not living on their own once they become adults are failures, and still need to be kicked out of the house such that they are forced to learn self-sufficiency. AFAICT, most parents of adult offspring have zero clue about how bad things actually are out there, with most still telling their children to go from business to business with printed-off Résumés. Outside of blue-collar jobs, I haven’t seen this work for a good twenty years, now.
  - phtrivier 8mo ago
    I'm probably picturing "junior" as "people still in college preparing to get their first job". My point is that a luxury of the software engineering craft is that you can practice "at pro level" very cheaply. Even as a teenager, learning and using vscode/python/react/etc... on your own is a possibility. Learning Salesforce and SAP and the internal support tool of BigCo is not. That being said, I completely agree that we're going to put a generation of "wannabee white collar" in a dire situation. Cynically, this might be an overdue correction from the years of "college degree for everyone", and maybe (just maybe) some people will actually thrive in the "hard-to-llm-ize" profession if they can retrain. (If the market laws apply, someone will build "turn advertisement-copy writers into electricians", and it would not necessarily be for the worst ? I know, easy to tell for me, who got the opposite deal by being a software engineer on demand at the right time at the beginning of my career.)