If you think AI will take your job it probably will...
Posted by Kok_Nikol@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 29 comments
... but you can prevent that by getting really good!
(disclaimer: this is a self-therapy post, I'm reading how I'll be out of a job every single day, so I had to find a silver lining)
If your honest about your abilities and see that AI can do them in its current form (or will be able to in the future, even with a conservative improvement estimate) then your probably right.
But nothing is stopping you from learning, getting better, getting excellent even!
It's impossible to predict where things are headed, but there seems to be great value in having deep knowledge about software engineering, the one where you will be able to understand every decision, know how to write and read code exceptionally well (even if you don't write it for your job), know why or why not to go with a particular solution, etc.
There is only one way to get there, and even if AI seems to muddy the waters here, there's no shortcut to excellence.
I wrote this to calm myself, but I hope it gives a tiny bit of positivity to someone else who reads it.
DespondentEyes@reddit
Ai doesn't need to be better than you to replace you. It only needs to be just good enough.
davidbasil@reddit
It doesn't matter. Businesses compete with the help of people, not tools.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
A lot of people don't get this, in case that AI can reliably do your job companies will replace you in a heartbeat.
subLimb@reddit
Read what code that the AI recommends. Anything you don't understand, ask the AI. If you still don't understand, ask more, learn more. If you are still not satisfied with the agent's justifications, consult stack overflow and official documentation and compare the two. Make this a constant habit. Before long you will start learning things you never would have even looked into before we had agent assistants.
xian0@reddit
I think the standards were getting lower. It went from "know how to implement a database" to "just know SQL" to "know the basic SQL queries" to "just use my library" to "don't do much of anything actually" in all the subfields. Well at least on social media, I'm sure if you went to a tech meetup they would be talking about all sorts of interesting and more complicated projects.
eufemiapiccio77@reddit
There’s a lot of denial. You can see it “I’m in a niche industry …” a lot of nonsense roles will go first then programming
Lower-Instance-4372@reddit
this is a healthy way to look at it, AI will probably automate the “easy” coding tasks, but the people who really understand systems, tradeoffs, and can actually design and debug complex stuff are still going to be the ones in demand.
False_Bear_8645@reddit
But the thing is everyone start somewhere. The easy task that make coding easier is the hard task for beginners. If AI make a mistake or can't debug something I'm here, but for a beginner the AI is better than them, in a world where we care more about the results than the process, I don't know how the new generation is managing that.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
Yes, thank you! That was exactly what I was trying to say.
Hybrii-D@reddit
What bothers me is that AI takes my salary, not my job.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
We are forever stuck in a fight for adequate salary sadly :(
Hybrii-D@reddit
Yep, a sad true.
PoMoAnachro@reddit
I look at it this way - if the role of developers is transitioning towards being coaches and managers coordinating AI agents who do the actual coding... What percentage of NFL coaches do you think have never played football? (the answer is "it rounds to 0%", with the sole exception being someone whose father worked in the NFL).
So even if AI becomes capable of doing all the programming(which I doubt is going to happen in the near future), people who have deep knowledge of programming and how to do it themselves are going to continue being far better at dealing with AI agents far into the future. Just because you're on the sidelines calling the plays doesn't mean you don't need to know football.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
I agree, but some coaches were mediocre players at best, it's a different kind of skillset I would say.
In any case, the general idea is to not become obsolete somehow.
I would prefer if it was some kind of dev role, but that seems highly unlikely to be the case.
So I have to figure out what to do.
PoMoAnachro@reddit
It is definitely a different skillset. You don't necessarily have to be operating at an elite level to be able to direct people (or agents) who are operating at an elite level. But if you can't do it to some degree it'll be really difficult.
And being elite does help honestly. Like pretty much 100% of NFL coaches have played at least college football, while only 30% have played in the NFL. So you might think being an elite player doesn't help that much in becoming a coach in the NFL... But if you look at the odds of ending up coaching an NFL team, turns out having played even a single game in the NFL multiply your chances by like 15x.
Anyways, obviously this isn't a direct analogue. My point was I think it'll be really hard to effectively accomplish meaningful work using AI without at least decent programming skills. And having really great programming skills, while not a prerequisite for turning out good work with AI, probably does significantly increase the odds.
Sweet_Witch@reddit
If you are truly passionate about something and study it, you have a chance to do better than competition that lacks your passionate? Thank you captain obvious.
Dude, the reason why people are scared is that many of them are not interested in CS and deep down don't care about it, they do care about the money, not saying here if it is good or bad. They would rather do something else with their life rather than study boring machines. In that case they should do something else.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
I never claimed I was saying something profound :D
Artistic-Error00@reddit
I was a graphic designer to start with before AI, and the market was already harsh and flooded, upskilled with ux design and front-end development, completely burned myself out in the process. AI came around just as I'd taken a sabbatical to recover, realised during that time that hey actually... I'm good. Don't need a creative 'turn your hobby into a profession' career, can't find my creativity anyway. I saved myself from being replaced, from having to do even MORE for less pay, having to stress myself out thinking I'll be replaced any minute because that's exactly happening now. Had considered freelancing and building my own small business but now you see businesses looking exactly the same with their sloppy generated designs and exactly zero idea of how unprofessional, unimaginative and unmemorable they all look. Bah, glad I'm out.
Of course this has only given me temporary reprieve and I have yet to figure out where I want to he next, what I want to pursue next that won't just restart the entire cycle. I've not quite recovered from my burnout and it's been 3 years, but I qm slowly rediscovering my hobby again. Small wins.
This may seem completely irrelevant to the post but I wanted to highlight that sometimes you need to rethink your path rather than push your very human boundaries to their limits in an attempt to get ahead of what's already running marathons and beating our records.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
I think I understand your point.
I kind of wish I could switch to something else, but this is the only thing I'm barely good at.
I do envy a lot of my friends in different fields who are absolutely not at risk from AI, and only find it amusing, and sometimes helpful.
Technical-Fruit-2482@reddit
Yes, if you think AI is anywhere near good enough to actually replace developers then you probably just aren't very good at programming.
Unfortunately a lot of people will remain not very good at programming, but if you're self aware enough to realise that you're not that good yet then you can practise, get good, and realise just how terrible AI actually is at writing code.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
This is what I tried to get across.
I have friends who are proper engineers, all of them use AI all the time and report that in the best case they are ~20% more productive.
GreatMinds1234@reddit
It will not, trust me. The amount of mistakes it makes is not less than it was 2 years ago. If we have to clean it's code that will end up my code and everybody knows that.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
That wasn't my point exactly.
If your current job is something AI is close to getting right, or might get close in the future then you should worry and do something about it.
If you work on very complex stuff you likely won't get replaced.
arm14789@reddit
Starting from first day using AI agents, i always referred them as a good help/advice tool and not code generator. If you ask right question you learn form answers and grow your skills.
Kok_Nikol@reddit (OP)
Honestly, they are exceptionally good at explaining, but you have to be careful since they do go rogue sometimes.
I feel like pairing with occasional google search works best.
Dahir_16@reddit
Ai will replace people who work the phases system in companies like feature developers but it won’t freelancers and business owners, so try to be whole software engineer who can handle start to end of the project.
ShardsOfSalt@reddit
Uh, being retarded is stopping me.
NationsAnarchy@reddit
Well you can definitely change that 👀
bootyhole_licker69@reddit
same, been freaking out reading all the doom posts too, but honestly just grinding fundamentals daily helped a lot mentally