Question to actual software engineers
Posted by cloudvy7@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 100 comments
Plain and simple, do you think this profession is worth getting into I'm SO SO SO confused. Every day I see dozens of posts saying: "I basically don't write code anymore", "I got laid off cuz of AI", but then i see posts saying "software devs are back, the amount of job opennings is growing", "companies don't actually rely on ai to handle business logic" etc etc.
And it just goes back and forth, I'm so tired of this.
Also 2 of my friends got a job as developers recently, one of which is really well paid(they added 3 yoe to jump straight into a mid level role. Which i think is totally fine and is what i plan on doing if i decide to stay)
please tell me your honest opinion, i really need to hear it
EntrepreneurHuge5008@reddit
My opinion is that your friends getting jobs as developers does not guarantee you will.
That said, it may be worth it:
cloudvy7@reddit (OP)
I'm in it for the money and again money. But second "money" here is about being able to make things myself.
Since my main goal is to create a successful business, run it, grow it and enjoy my life. I dont want 9 to 5 all my life.
I have a few ideas which I'm currently implementing, but I can't be sure things will work out as fast as i want them to, so that's where the software engineering comes in(or so i planned originally when starting to learn it)
Hawxe@reddit
You’re not creating a business and working less than 9 to 5 dude
zeocrash@reddit
Yeah it's great. I've been coding professionally for 20 years and I love my job.
The_Other_David@reddit
It's a great time to have 20 YOE in the industry! Maybe not a great time to have 0 YOE.
zeocrash@reddit
There have been better times, but op is in Europe and I don't think Europe has the shitty employment situation or corporate culture the US has.
The_Other_David@reddit
If anything, Europe's employment situation is worse. The corporate culture is better in some ways, worse in others. It's harder for Euro companies to get rid of people, but that also means they're way pickier about who they hire in the first place. And all that work for half of what the US pays.
Philluminati@reddit
I'm 43. When I got into programming it was always on the up-and-up. It couldn't have been better and my whole life I've been in demand, quitting a job and falling ass-backwards into a higher paying one. I now earn an excellent salary compared to my peers and my job pleasant is relatively low stress.
If AI weren't in the picture, there is a huge problem with outsourcing and particular India. When I started programming in the UK there were 300,000 developers in India. Now there's 5 million. This alone makes me fear wage suppression is strengthening and AI only further extends that fear.
As a senior dev I get pressured to cut corners (which we call technical debt) and I'm terrible at guessing how long work will take. In the age of AI I can imagine it will be insanely hard to deal with managers who think AI can shortcut the essential learning you need to do to be responsible for things. It's going to be a real quagmire and perhaps feel like IT support where you're dealing with the most random and unstructured shit all the time.
For those reasons I would consider other things. But hey, if you run Linux and write code at night because you love it - you may as well get paid for it!
boolean_discretion@reddit
As a total outsider, I always assumed managers would have the technical knowledge to understand and avoid those technical debt situations you describe. Of course as you think a little deeper, it is likely business managers that push such development.
Can you give any further comment on what the inner workings of that dynamic actually looks like in a real-world setting?
Philluminati@reddit
Most technical IT skills stop with the development team. If I were to pull a finger out of the air, I'd say 75% of managers cannot code or do the job. Project Managers might typically earn less than the developers they manage.
You don't get more technical expertise and experience as you go up through the chain of command, what you tend to find is that the developers have a tight understanding of one specific part of the business their app is involved with. (e.g. shipping orders). The direct managers share that knowledge and then as you go up the chain it becomes more about business process modelling and wider and wider business aims.
nomiras@reddit
Generally speaking, it's due to rushed deadlines and incomplete requirements. They want the world, but do not describe it as such. You attempt to tell them 'hey what about this and that?', but they decline it.
Then you go to ship it and shit hits the fan.
Now everything is on fire and all you are doing is bug fixes because they actually needed this and that. But guess what? That entire time, the data is becoming corrupted, so now you have to go back and fix the data. All this takes time. Meanwhile, CEO is wondering why the next project hasn't started and is considering hiring a larger team, cheaper, from India.
Of course, if business couldn't even tell the devs that are super familiar with the product on how to correctly do something, good luck with the language and time barrier. I think we might see fallout from that at some point soonish.
cmh_ender@reddit
just remember, managers have bosses too.
sales / senior leadership / Project Management, everyone had their own deadline, and your tech debt doesn't matter, that's tomorrow's problem.
a good technical manager can shield SOME of that, but more often than not, it's hit the deadline to ship the program / feature / whatever to keep the business going another quarter.
AI is already cutting jobs for junior devs. right now anyone that quits or is fired from our department is getting backfilled by an AI agent, we have coding agents running in our slack so you can ask it to check a bug report, pull the code down and figure out what's wrong, it will take a senior dev with a code fix and ask to approve / modify.
boolean_discretion@reddit
Thanks for your insight
Suitable-Turnover597@reddit
If you are technically advanced and you like it, you are a fan of the business, then do it. Now the trend is for specialists who deftly handle AI, and this may not be exactly a development, but the entry threshold is lower, and developing simpler products as efficiently as possible. Yes, this is a separate niche, and at the moment it is relevant. One way or another, this is still a useful experience, it can be applied in other areas
IceIllustrious5529@reddit
Having a strong GitHub and real projects definitely helpsway more than some people realize. Passion and consistency go a long way in this field.
CLiP94@reddit
Ah, if you like it then do it, if you don't like it then don't do it. Can't be easier than that.
tilted0ne@reddit
There’s nothing wrong with the industry. The problem is you expect certainty. You want someone to stand in front of you and say “do X, Y, Z and you’ll end up here,” and when they can’t, you assume something’s broken. It’s not. That’s just reality.
Life is uncertain. The sooner you accept that, the better. Stop chasing this idea of an optimal, guaranteed path—it doesn’t exist. All that does is keep you stuck.
What you actually need to hear is this: stop being afraid of making mistakes. Pick something, commit to it, and see it through properly. Adjust as you go.
Because the people speaking with certainty are usually talking shit. CS was sold as this golden ticket, and you’ve already seen how fast that narrative flipped. That alone should tell you to stop waiting for someone to reaffirm you.
At some point, you just need to have the backbone to choose a direction yourself and own it.
Individual-Shame6481@reddit
A guaranteed path does exist. It's called Medicine.
chaoticbean14@reddit
There are a couple other areas as well that are pretty much guaranteedd. As of late maybe they aren't as 'guaranteed' as they once were, but they are very, very stable and comfortable.
That part of the response really hit me a little wrong, mostly because those things do in fact exist.
Biohack@reddit
You're not wrong, medicine is probably the closest thing to a guaranteed path. That being said it is insanely competitive and while you might have a guaranteed path once you get there you are not guaranteed to get into med school (and you will need to work very hard and perform exceptionally well in school) and even once you get into med school you are not guaranteed to get the residency/fellowship you might want.
This is also a fairly U.S. centric view. Medicine is not the same guarantee everywhere as it is in the U.S. and it's not a guarantee that the U.S. medical system won't change at some point.
hoangfbf@reddit
There’s nuance here. What you wrote is motivational, but imo misses some important points. There is something called realistic risk assessment. Some of the problem really is structural: fewer junior openings, inflated hiring bars, and saturated market. Telling people to just pick something and commit ignores that different paths have very different odds, and mistakes can be very costly in time and money.
lachesis17@reddit
You could say the same about trying to be a professional musician. It doesn't mean to not do something because of logistics, it means do what you love and don't give up on it or keep it as a hobby.
2hands10fingers@reddit
Hot damn. I almost want to frame this comment.
TheSoftwareMaster@reddit
This is an amazing answer. People want to jump on to the next “shiny toy” without thinking about the potential disasters waiting for them.
The tech industry was always going to have issues, people just turned a blind eye to it and thought a few courses on codecademy would earn them 100k a year
Jahonay@reddit
This is a better stated version of what I would say
boolean_discretion@reddit
That sounds like nuance... we don't do that here
[Ha fr though this is a brilliant answer]
rwooz@reddit
Damn, I wish I had heard this advice like 15 years earlier.
No-Injury-1785@reddit
There are two realities happening simultaneously: Getting started as a software engineer is more difficult than ever because entry-level positions are more competitive and AI is taking care of some of the more rote work, but as software engineers gain experience, there is still a high demand for skilled developers and they are not getting replaced by AI.
The field has evolved, employers are looking for more skill depth, and the further in your career you get, the less you will actually be coding and the more you will do problem solving, system design, and decision-making.
Most of the layoffs occurred because companies hired too many people, not because AI replaced them. If you’re willing to actually put in the work, continue to learn, and become genuinely skilled, it’s still very much worth doing, just know that the “easy way” to do it is almost non-existent.
TechBriefbyBMe@reddit
The job market posts are all true simultaneously depending on whether you're competing against 500 people or you actually know SQL. Turns out "AI will replace us" and "we can't find devs" aren't contradictory, just describing different skill levels.
skysparko@reddit
Honestly, most of that noise is just… noise.
AI hasn’t replaced developers, it’s just changed how we work. You’ll write less boilerplate, but you still need to understand things to build, debug, and make decisions.
The market is a bit weird right now, but good developers are still getting jobs. Your friends getting hired is proof of that.
The real question is do you enjoy building things? If yes, it’s still a great field.
Just don’t get stuck in tutorials. Start building early. I had the same confusion and once I focused on actually building (used platforms like skillron.com for structured practice), things became much clearer.
Focus on skill, not the noise 👍
cmh_ender@reddit
I think there will be more inhouse software development jobs but they will pay less and be more reliant on business skills than software skills. My friends that are experienced have plenty of work, juniors that only have school experience are going to struggle to fight against agentic ai.
Informal-Chance-6067@reddit
What about self-taught developers or indie devs? And how will there be future senior devs?
Own_Loquat_7602@reddit
9/10 times self taught will be cooked if they have no background experience. Even among new hires, companies will usually go for people with experience or new grads. It’s not impossible but it’ll be much harder.
cmh_ender@reddit
self taught is fine if your git repo shows you have an understanding of what you are looking at. and to be honest, if you have a passion for it, you will throw yourself into side project and build up a good technical resume. you do that for a few years, work your way up in a company and now you are the senior.....
coding is going to look VERY different 2 years from now. translating business requirements into prompts, testing, scaling, troubleshooting.. deploying... everything BUT the nuts and bolts of programming.
teknoise@reddit
Git repo is meaningless, as you won’t get thru the resume filters when there’s no formal education listed. 500 applicants, 300 of them have at least some form of uni, you know where the other 200 applicants are going.
Ill_Win_1685@reddit
Yeah, but that became ussles since you can fill github repo with ai built projects.
Ok-Bear7887@reddit
Assuming anyone hiring even opena the github link.
Informal-Chance-6067@reddit
This. (Said from someone who doesn’t have much of a GitHub profile to begin with)
Kane_ASAX@reddit
Self taught developers already have it tough. If you don't have anything to prove your worth you are cooked. The company I work for now has 3 other developers.
I'm the only one with a software engineering degree. Other 2 have no degrees but have experience in other parts and pivoted to software development. The senior has like 5 certifcates regarding linux and other architectural stuff.
They are actively training me to co own one of our products so I'm able to take full control over it, other 2 devs don't have that opportunity(they are more cpient facing than I am though)
PartyParrotGames@reddit
I’ve interviewed CS PhDs from top schools who couldn’t code well in practice, and I’ve also interviewed self-taught developers who were exceptional engineers. Most experienced interviewers have seen some version of this.
At a certain point, engineering ability depends more on intelligence, discipline, judgment, communication, and how much real work someone has done than on where they were educated. A degree is unfortunately not a guarantee of competence, especially since universities aren’t optimized for teaching the skills that matter most in the industry.
I wouldn’t be surprised if self-taught developers become more common and more competitive over time as the gap between what the industry needs and what universities actually teach continues to grow. Academia being what it is, slow af to adapt and the industry being what it is, fast af to change.
wanderfflez@reddit
I think that's why when it comes to Senior Developers, Experience matters more than degrees. However when it comes to Juniors I think that you have to consider something and a 4 year degree is presumed to have more experience coding and understanding nitty-grittiness of it compared to a bootcamp.
Not a hiring manager though, just speculation.
asentientgrape@reddit
As someone just out of college in exactly this sort of role, they are going to flourish because of agentic AI. We don't know the exact contours of what it will look like, but the world is going to invent all new ways to use software and do business.
The concept of every middle school having their own IT team was once inconceivable. IT may not be as glamorous as developing ARPANET for the military, but still. We're at a point where any CompSci graduate can develop and maintain an inventory database, website, and maybe do some customer analysis on their own. When you're designing software to be used by a single company with simple needs, you can tolerate code that would get you fired in a production setting.
You don't need Silicon Valley when every florist is hiring a software engineer.
horoblast@reddit
In my position, my team and my friends who work in IT in other companies, it's like this. We use AI heavily as a tool, to make crud stuff, tests, ui fixes etc easier. We use opus for when he needs to implement a bigger feature.
We all have around 10+ years of experience, so we basically analyse a problem or new feature, think it through, talk about it with eachother during sprint meetings etc. We already have it in our heads how it should look, what needs to be changed where, what cloud items we need what database migrations are neede, etc. Because we have the experience.
Now, imolementing it would say, take 1 day. Or, you let an agent generate changes for 15 minutes or something and then we check it. Make minor changes or ask the agent for a new solution based on our new updated info. Say this process takes 4 hours instead of 8.
Because we have the technical experience, the business know-how and always review the generated code and still write some ourselves, we can perform for example twice as fast.
Instead of being laid off due to AI, you still need capable and experienced people, both in technical IT and business knowledge to do the reviews. But now we can ship features and solve bugs twice as fast. This is a hughe win for the company and they're hiring more (experienced!) People rather than fire anyone.
It makes us more a software or solution architect rather than just a "code monkey" and honestly I enjoy it very much. Instead of wasting timzme writing boilerplate code, simpel tests, random azure errors etc... I can focus on the "bigger picture". I still review the agent's changes and see it as a TOOL rather than a "fire and forget solution for everything".
MayaIsSunshine@reddit
Absolutely not, the market is saturated. The world needs plumbers and HVAC technicians
boolean_discretion@reddit
Honestly this gross oversimplification is just straight up a meme at this point.
Tell me, have you worked in the trades at all? You're suggesting people looking for a high paying office job to choose low paying, back breaking work cause "the world needs plumbers..."
So have you worked in the trades?
The_Other_David@reddit
There's never a shortage of college-educated professionals saying that OTHER PEOPLE should get into plumbing.
MayaIsSunshine@reddit
Have you been a fresh CS college grad in 2026?
boolean_discretion@reddit
Brother I'm not discrediting your sentiment. But have you spent 10hrs on your feet for 5 days in a row?
Everything is hard work. But trades can be very hard on the body, perhaps less so on the mind. It's a trade off.
Dasati08@reddit
They might be physically more demanding, but low paying?
boolean_discretion@reddit
At entry level, no it's not the best pay.
But agreed, as you put a lot of experience in, the potential for high pay is there.
BizAlly@reddit
Software engineering is still very much worth it, but it’s not the easy gold rush it used to be. The bar is higher now. AI didn’t replace devs, it just replaced low-skill or repetitive work. good engineers are still in demand, especially ones who can actually think, debug, and understand systems.
AntiDynamo@reddit
No one can tell you what you should do with your life. The golden age of software (where any idiot with a boot camp could get a job) is over. Competition is high and betting higher. But that doesn’t mean software is necessarily worse than other sectors, it’s just normalising.
Do it if you want to but don’t expect an easy ride. Like everyone else on earth you may not find a job and have to pivot to something else later
Traditional_Muffin@reddit
A lot of folks will say it's just a tool to augment your productivity and that you still need engineering skill to properly delegate a task to the AI. However, in order to gain that skill, as someone learning and trying to get professional experience, you need an entry level job. Most businesses will no longer have those types of roles when the AI can do them cheaper. There's a huge gap in the career ladder for SWEs that will make it impossible to get to that next level unless you were already on the other side.
newrockstyle@reddit
The noise online is real but most of it swings between extremes actual dev work still needs people who can think debug and build beyond ai suggestions. Focus less on trends and more on whether you enjoy solving problems daily because that is what the job really is long term.
relaxandunwind94@reddit
I dont know how it's going in big tech companies. But smaller companies do need software engineers. My bosses are 40+ to 60 year olds. I've sit down in multiple meetings as like a consultant. Most of the highup say they don't understand any of those new technologies. My current boss was empressed that a colleague of mine made simple dashboard where they store important pdf files and courses and schematics. They design it on paint. All they know that AI is apparently helping in productivity. The most common way I've seen it it used is to replace manuals. Like workers need follow specific guidelines from a rule book of like 400 pages. It. Time consuming so they will let the software people train and ai and those manuals. But nobody knows how it works. That way they need the software People.
nightwood@reddit
Honestly, I wouldn't.
hondashadowguy2000@reddit
Professionals are always in demand despite what the doom and gloom machine on the Internet tries to get you to believe. If you’re serious about being a software engineer then get busy and ignore all the noise, you’ll make it fine.
SpliffMD@reddit
Block out the noise. Most posts are ai generated nowadays and if they are forcing an opinion on you then you should assume its ai generated. Dont even look at this nonsense. Form your own opinions by building shit.
makonde@reddit
Very high risk now, I think it's slowly being erroded as a good career that can employ a lot of people
EccentricFellow@reddit
Do you program for love or money? I fix poorly designed systems that were built by people who could pass tests but had no passion for this work so they phoned in the effort. AI is doing the same thing but faster. If you cannot distinguish yourself from AI then you will not code at all you will simply feed prompts to Claude. We are already flooded with that and I doubt it is either lucrative or secure. If you can distinguish your from the algorithms and have a strong work ethic then you possibly have a future. Otherwise, find something you care about and do that as well as you can.
lilcode-x@reddit
No one really knows, but what I can say is that my job as a senior frontend engineer hasn’t changed super drastically. For example, today I shipped 2 small feature changes, reviewed 2 PRs from a team member, attended 2 meetings, and spent time learning about a new framework we are implementing (part of an ongoing migration.) AI was involved in only some of my tasks for the day.
Of course that’s not always the case, and if I’m working on a large project then AI is more heavily used, but my point is that there is more work involved to being a software dev than just manually typing code. So imo SWEs aren’t going anywhere any time soon, but the role is changing and no one knows how it’ll play out. I don’t think any company even fully understands how to implement AI workflows effectively, we’re all just experimenting still.
konm123@reddit
It would seem that what AI is targeting are the easiest and fun parts of the job. And that's largely where I have seen the line is drawn.
rlebeau47@reddit
The company I work for is going all in on AI. By the end of this year, they want all new code written by AI only, not by dev hands. Devs are only to lead the AI and check its results. I hate it. I like writing my own code, thank you very much.
pidgezero_one@reddit
Yeah, I don't feel as strongly about it myself but still have mixed feelings. I've been doing SWE professionally for 11 years now, just started a new job recently that's transitioning to more AI-heavy coding.
I like having the freedom to offload things to AI so I can get more done in the day and never have to work late, but I feel uneasy about where it's going sometimes. So far, the company I work for is excited about this because it means the engineers they have can ship deliverables faster, rather than it meaning they don't need engineers. Which I do like as a philosophy, and I think is what separates a company that understands the strengths and weaknesses about this technology from one that sees it like jangling keys with dollar signs attached, but it feels like its future is impossible to predict right now and whether or not things will stay in a state where it makes more sense to strongly augment our work instead of replace us.
I've put myself in a position where I'm helping build out the infrastructure for how engineers use AI, which feels like it's good for my job security. I don't mind it, and empowering my coworkers in whatever way necessary is something I get a lot of enjoyment out of in general, but I'm not as passionate about the means itself as I was back when we had to do everything by hand. I guess at least I still work on a lot of interesting personal projects that can still scratch that passion itch.
UltGamer07@reddit
AI or not, software engineering IMO has only been a good field to get into if you love doing it and might as well get paid to do it. I’m not saying that’s all devs currently, but if you find a way to find people in the field that are highly paid and love their jobs, I think an overwhelming majority of them would be people who just enjoy doing this, cos it’s fun. It’s often the stuff you do side, messing around with obscure code, random OSS projects etc that compound and skyrocket things for you. And none of this changes with AI IMO, cos those folks will naturally adapt out of their curiosity and love to try out new tools and figure out how to do things the best way
Tl Dr; If you wanna do it just for the money, probably not a good idea
Aggressive-Yard3877@reddit
I'm in the same boat! I've seen my peers struggle with job security while others seem to be thriving. How do you navigate this rollercoaster of uncertainty? Is there a way to future-proof our skills or find stable environments amidst all this flux?
teaovercoffee_@reddit
Do it. But only if you are genuinely curious and enjoy it or have a knack for it. In my opinion we’ll always need people who know what the AI is trying to do because in the end AI cannot be held accountable. There are risks in job supply but you’re building technical knowledge/problem solving skills that could be transferred to other jobs too.
Content_Box7529@reddit
Yeah, that's basically lying. Some companies do check, and it's way better to get an entry-level job and prove yourself than risk getting caught up in a mess.
Advanced_Slice_4135@reddit
If you love it, go for it. If
Gnaxe@reddit
The existence of Project Glasswing proves that the next generation of AIs are already superhuman at coding, and the one after that is already in development. It's basically over and will just take a bit more time to catch up with us.
The current job market is mostly due to interest rates controlling inflation from the ham-fisted Trump tariffs. The tech CEOs like to use AI as an excuse for layoffs they're doing for other reasons so as not to spook their shareholders. If you're already a mid-level or higher software engineer, you can maybe get a job for a few more years, as the economy is already starting to recover. If you're junior or below, don't start. Learn a trade instead. You'll get to higher pay, faster, and for less money. Then the robots will take a bit longer to replace you.
Anyone not paying attention to the Mythos story basically doesn't know what they're talking about. The free models do not compare to even the February Claude Opus release, and Mythos is far more capable than that. It's finding and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities by the dozen, making it a cyberweapon dangerous enough to cripple entire nation states, so it's not available to the general public. It's far from clear that we can patch enough of our vulnerable software quickly enough to avert a catastrophe before Mythos leaks, or before a rival model controlled by a less scrupulous company amounts to the same thing. Nobody knows what these things are capable of before they're tested, and sometimes not even then if the tests are sloppy.
Even if the government swoops in and wisely puts a moratorium on creating Mythos-class models, software engineering will never be the same. Writing critical systems in C/C++, short of NASA-style restrictions, will be seen as reckless, and we might have to resort to using formal verification even in the commercial sector. It's mostly not what is being taught now.
If you just look at whole jobs lost to AI, you're missing the bigger picture, because that's mostly not happening yet. Instead, we're seeing task-by-task progress, where the AIs are automating more and more components of the work as they become more capable and we learn how to use them for these things. In the short term, that makes devs using AI competently feel more productive. But when all the tasks go, so does the job. Humans aren't magic. There is no task that they fundamentally can't do eventually. Where "eventually" is looking like single-digit numbers of years at this rate. Only drop-in remote workers automating the entire white-collar economy justify the trillion-dollar investment levels in datacenters, and probably humanoid robot brains shortly thereafter. No way this is justified for $20/month end-user subscriptions.
exenimaa@reddit
The AI doomers are full of shit. I’m a senior engineer working in banking and AI has made zero meaningful impact to jobs or salary, because while it can increase the speed at which you code, it can’t translate business context, especially when the business context is constantly evolving.
The market is flooded with “engineers” who use AI as a crutch, who would crumble when trying to debug a race condition. Engineers who understand patterns and architecture, and can incorporate them into their code and make them fit for business purpose, are still in high demand.
Indigo903@reddit
Do you mean that they lied? I would strongly advise against making up experience that you don’t have, considering some companies will run a background check to verify that your experience is real. Your friend got lucky that their employer didn’t check, you might not.
cloudvy7@reddit (OP)
That's a really big company as well. I'm sure they do background checks. But: 1. We are in europe and I feel like there are more immigrants applying to postings, so companies rely more on interviews.
ScholarNo5983@reddit
Developers have been embellishing their resumes since time immemorial, so you friends did nothing new. This is very common practice, and as such you really do need to participate in this process just to get through the "bingo keyword" selection process found in the HR of most companies.
Now there is one piece of advice I would offer on this topic. If you do put something on your resume, at least make sure you've spent a minimal amount of time studying and understanding that thing.
Over the years I've helped interview potential developers. As an example, in one such case the company was looking for a junior C developer. Every resume presented listed strong C skills, and we narrowed this down to the ten best candidates. To help in the selection process I created the simplest 10-question C language test. Of those 10 applicants, half failed with a score of F, as they struggled to with simple questions on topics like strcat, malloc and spot the null pointer error.
grismar-net@reddit
Both things are true - many software developers write way less code and rely on the AI to do a lot of the busywork, while they review, design, test, and integrate.
Some of them never were much of a developer to begin with and whatever coding they did was bound to be replaced with AI. Some of them are expert developers that just embrace this technology to increase their output. The former category probably needs to start looking for a different career - the latter category may have good times ahead.
I don't know about growing job openings, but I see plenty of businesses now having to deal with jank and slop produced with AI that needs the hand of a skilled and experienced developer to be turned into something maintainable that won't sink the company on empty promises.
My honest opinion: software engineer is not a job that's going to go away - but it's never going to be the same again, many courses teach it as if it still is the same, and it's impossible to say whether we'll end up needed fewer or more in the longer run. They'll all be using AI in many forms, and those forms are still rapidly evolving - you'll need to learn to develop software, as well as needing to stay up to date on how AI tools change the job.
If you're confident you can be a good one, you won't have that much to worry. If you worry you'll be a middling one at best, or were hoping for a relatively easy position to move into project management later, perhaps skip the development role altogether. Regardless, it may be hard to find an in with businesses right now - graduate hiring is down a lot, so you'll be up against competition from flunked bad developers looking for a lower rung job.
One more thing: software development is not something you take a course or two in and then move into - it's a career that requires pretty long and deep dedication to get any good at. If you're just looking to dabble, or see it as an opportunity coming from something, expect to be very busy for a long time, for very little reward at first.
travis-hope@reddit
The honest advice I’m giving people starting out is no unless you’ve a genius. Study something meaningful that’s hands on like a doctor, an engineer that produces something if you’re in a part of the world where production still happens or a similar degree that needs a human where it’s less desk based and also less likely to be automated by robots in the first instance. Having a non software engineering skill and being able to code via AI is the best setup for the future.
SeatWild1818@reddit
If you're naturally good at programing (or generally mathematically oriented), then it's likely a good idea.
First, there'll continue to be a demand for software. If anything, the demand for software will increase because some software products that were formally too expensive to produce are now economically viable.
Second, assuming AI does progress to the point that it can replace the majority of developes even with today's software demand, then it'll for sure be good enough to replace any other white collar job.
Finally, a shocking percentage of software engineers aren't very good at engineering software. to succeed, you don't have to be the best. You have to be competent
sessamekesh@reddit
Okay, take all this with a grain of salt - this has been my experience, but all of this is going to vary by domain, level of experience, location, role, etc.
I'll say that the things I hear said on CS-related subreddits (this one and r/cscareerquestions in particular) are more often than not way disconnected from what I experience.
Anecdotally, things that I was used to during the 2016-2020 era of software careers are back - I'm getting frequent and unsolicited recruiter messages, and I've recently had a couple peers start looking for work and have job offers within a week or two. For skilled mid- and senior- level engineers, it looks to me like the market is great again. That said, I still know junior engineers who are struggling to get a foothold in the industry, and a few low-mid-level engineers who are struggling to transition into new roles in a way that is much worse than it was a decade ago, and not much better than it was during the post-2020 tech jobs market shrinking.
My impression is that it's really good for people who are reasonably better than average, that "average" and below average developers are still surprisingly bad, and that cold applying for jobs is still an absolute nightmare.
Personally, I still write quite a bit of code, though I am finding more and more than I'm able to automate tasks with AI. Some of those task are code authorship. But I'm still not impressed by that - I worked for 5 years in FAANG where about 60% of the "code" I wrote was auto-generated by deterministic non-AI tools (think generating C++/JavaScript/Java types from schemas, like protobufs). I'm still performing engineering tasks just as much as I did 5 years ago, except now those engineering tasks often take the form of guiding an agent instead of manually authoring code (though I still do quite a bit of manually authoring code!)
Key_Storm_2273@reddit
I'm still waiting to hear more people who want to get into coding for fun or to do something helpful rather than just for personal again or "learning/career building".
Conscious_Bank9484@reddit
Good skill to have, but if you’re looking for a career then you need more than the skill to get you in the door.
DetroitRedWings79@reddit
Software development is radically changing. It’s not what it used to be a couple years ago and going forward it’s going to change in ways we can’t even imagine.
To put an analogy to it that you can understand:
Imagine software developers being the chefs in a restaurant. The head chef is the senior developer. He trains the new chefs/developers.
The chefs/developers up until this point have been judged on the quality of their recipes and how they execute them. In other words, how the food looks, tastes, etc.
Along comes AI. Suddenly, customers can look at a menu and summon the food on demand.
They can just look at it, point, and — POOF — the food is at your table. The chefs didn’t need to cook it.
Now that’s not to say the food at the table is automatically quality. The chefs might wanna come by every now and then to taste test it, tweak the automated food, etc. But they physically don’t need to cook it. Over time, the food keeps getting better and better.
In essence, the chefs job is now less about cooking the food and moreso designing the automated menu and ensuring what comes out is quality.
But here’s the problem: what used to take entire kitchens of chefs/developers running a restaurant has been dramatically reduced.
You don’t need a team of 10 developers. You can get by on 1-2 now. This is creating a supply and demand problem.
My personal take? I think as time goes on, software developers will realize they can run their own small consulting businesses and the need for a traditional W2 job will reach more of an equilibrium.
kcdragon@reddit
There is still demand for senior+ developers but your concerns are justified about entry level roles. This spring will be a tough market for graduating senior CS majors. It's also a tough time to do a bootcamp and find a job after that.
I would not recommend that someone do a bootcamp now or try to learn on their own and get a job. I think it's still fine to start a four year CS program now but you need to be on top of finding internships and you'll have four years to wait out this weird market.
icesurfer10@reddit
I've been in software for what must be about 15 years now. In the boom I remember thinking that I had a set of skills that I could pass onto my children, but with the way things are going, I will try to encourage them to stay away from software development unless it really is their passion.
The market is saturated and jobs out of university etc are falling. I know reasonable developers that have taken several months to find jobs whereas it would've been a week or so previously.
If you do want to continue to pursue it, go in expecting to need to stand out from a big crowd, and that its probably going to be a bit of a slog for a while.
jampola@reddit
I’ll weight in. For context, I’m head of development where I am employed, thus responsible for hiring. The role of someone who purely cuts code is dying, however, what is still relatively in demand (in my industry anyway) is technical/functional developers, aka, you can get in front of clients and properly articulate business requirements into specs that LLMs can build out. This obviously is add odds with the stereotype that most devs being quite introverted.
I’m really interested in how CS degrees are going to pivot in the next few years.
sticky-dynamics@reddit
I have no idea. AI is kinda insane what it can do and I'm not even sure I will have a job a few years from now, or that it will pay what it would have a few years ago if I do.
r2k-in-the-vortex@reddit
Posts and articles and all that is just bullshit hype, more fantasy than reality.
Practically, software engineering is same as it has always been, all depends on your own skills.
People misunderstand something. Coding is to software engineering like technical drawings are to mechanical engineering. They are the tangible output of the work done, a record and a formalization of it. But a piece of paper or a piece of code is not the value, the work done to produce it is the value. And AI or no AI, that work still needs to be done.
But software engineering wasn't easy money before AI and it still isn't. Getting into it with the mindset of "is it worth it?" is unlikely to get you very far. There is a reason why so many people in this field are frankly neuro-divergent, to find out how the magic black box works, you need to have a bit of a fetish for finding out what's inside the magic black box. If you don't really care beyond a payday, you will find it near impossible to sufficiently motivate yourself in the right way.
GreatMinds1234@reddit
Always worth it. There will always be a lot to do, do not let this AI alarmist cr@p influence your decision. As a software engineer you'll always have a way to make a living and be in control of your time more than any other profession.
Whatever801@reddit
The way I see it where the industry is at right now, is that yes most of the actual coding is being done by AI, but you need to have engineers there who know what they're doing to architect the tasks, supervise, and ensure correct functioning. I have hired one or two junior engineers, where all they would do is feed the task I assign them into the AI. Then later I would ask "how is xyz working, why did you make this design choice, the code isn't working, etc" they would say "idk that's what Claude did". That is absolutely NOT what you wanna do if you're just getting into this career and a fast track to getting laid off. I might as well tell Claude myself you know? The need for code to be written is virtually unlimited. The difference now is the productivity expectation per worker is going to go way up if it hasn't already. I transitioned from daily coding to management and architecture years ago and I feel incredibly productive with these tools and the reason is I know how to tell junior engineers how to do things. Everything I've ever used AI for, I 100% could have easily done myself and had already designed and architected everything as I did for junior engineers. It's just now I have an army of junior engineers that work super fast and never get tired. So think along those lines and you'll be very valuable to a company. You need to be rock solid on coding fundamentals and system design and you need to know how to delegate implementation tasks to AI. Those are the core skills now.
whattteva@reddit
It sounds like he lucked out getting a company that has mediocre interview process. No chance you'll be able to wing that with our interview process. In fact, I just rejected someone who, on his resume, is supposed to be a senior, but can't even answer basic coding questions that I'd expect even a college grad should be able to answer. Also, he "blanked out" when asked about details on his past experience, making me feel like he made it up. I mean, who "forgets" about what they did where they supposedly improve the performance by 30%?
No-Suggestion-9459@reddit
Not a software engineer but I work closely with them.
I think it can be a worthwhile career but the dynamics have changed with the amount of people getting degrees and AI. There's going to be good money for a software engineer, but you better be good. I think the marginal engineers will be weeded out.
Early career is going to be different. You won't just graduate and use your degree to get a job. You'll have to find odd contract jobs (as in gig work), build up a portfolio (like what artists do) and likely release something. A game, app, etc. IMO all that is stuff you've kind of had to do anyway at some level but it's going to be even more important now.
LetUsSpeakFreely@reddit
The profession is in a radical transitionary stage. You might have a future in it, but you will be fighting tooth and nail the whole way.
If I were you I'd find an alternative career. White collar jobs are crazy oversaturated right now and H1Bs and outsourcing are killing us.
Look into a blue collar job: HVAC, electrician, plumbing, heavy equipment operator, trucking, welder, etc. Those jobs are very in-demand and are rarely geographically locked.
Dubiisek@reddit
All of AI is dead, go work retail or pick up a trade.
Otherwise come back when you learn how to search for information instead of asking about something that a dozen of threads are created for every day in this sub-reddit alone.
sumplookinggai@reddit
The reality is that millions of new CS grads (not even considering adjacent degrees) are being churned out by universities around the world every year. The vast majority who would gladly work for USD12k a year. If you're from a developed country you have to ask yourself, why a company would hire a junior for USD70k when they can get the 3 juniors from the third world for less. The same applies to seniors, why hire one for USD100k when you can get 2 or 3 for the same?
SharkSymphony@reddit
I've never been too excited about people wanting to pursue software development for purely economic reasons. I think the best reason to get into this industry is if you enjoy building software.
But if we must talk prospects: even though the tools are changing drastically right now, someone's got to point the agents in the right direction and correct them if they pull a fast one or misunderstand the assignment. Someone's got to look critically at what's being produced, and make judgment calls about which requirements the software should meet, and how. Those engineering skills are pretty much the same before and after the migration to AI tools. I think those are the skills, more than just the coding itself, that will get you a job.
So: yes.
prsquared@reddit
10 years in the industry. I was laid off last month. It's rough out there for devs with my experience. I can't even begin to imagine how rough it is going to be for entry level
JohnBrownsErection@reddit
Get into basket weaving, we're full.
chocolate_asshole@reddit
it’s still worth it long term but it’s nothing like youtube makes it look, took me a year of rejections to land a kinda mid job, hiring is rough everywhere now
Bossman420420@reddit
My advice would depend on what other skills you have and at what stage of life you are. For example, if you have a skill that AI is a long way off automating like Electrical Engineering then I would say to stick with that.
cloudvy7@reddit (OP)
Currently my main skill is just software engineering, i do full stack, still learning though and just recently started doing freelance work. Im 20yo
readmond@reddit
Get out while you can. Avoid plumbing and HVAC though. There will be millions of plumbers when AI kills software engineering jobs.