Software Engineers Losing Control of Their Careers
10 posts across 6 communities in the last 60 days; 40% from Hacker News.
“This problem has been around in tech for at least as long as I've been here, but LLM-mania has definitely thrown water on the grease fire. The arrogant programmer/engineer type who thinks everything else in the world must be easy in comparison to their vocation. The disdain of…”
“Were you chasing the feeling of successfully solving a problem? Have you replaced problem solving with LLM chats?Maybe instead of engineering, you’ve been subtly shifted into project management and hate that career.But it’s tough to engineer much these days. Instead I find I’m…”
“AI's biggest issue is giving idiots confidence to do what is way above their mental capacity and no body knows who would be able to give CPR to a system that all of a sudden is out of control without anyone having any clue what's going on.”
Several software engineers express fear and uncertainty about the future of their careers due to advancements in AI tools like Claude Fable. They worry about job displacement, the devaluation of skills, and a general loss of control over their professional trajectory as these technologies become more capable.
SOURCES (27)
“That’s the thing - the FAFO is significantly dampened by the remaining grey beards nudging things back on track over time.See this over and over on hn and Reddit - CEOs are stupid and don’t understand how much pain offshore/AI causes. No…they’re taking a calculated…”
“Maybe I live in some kind of Reddit bubble but I'm under the impression that most of IT companies either already write and review ~100% of their code with Claude Code or will start doing it during next couple of months. I asked my programmer friends from few different companies and all of them say the same thing, they just prompt to AI. It feels like nobody writes code by hand anymore. It's all about overseeing AI that handles code and Jira tickets. This got me thinking, how much worse c”
“They are afraid but I haven't seen anyone more afraid and insecure than Product designers.”
“This problem has been around in tech for at least as long as I've been here, but LLM-mania has definitely thrown water on the grease fire. The arrogant programmer/engineer type who thinks everything else in the world must be easy in comparison to their vocation. The disdain of all things outside STEM as "soft skill" stuff for IQ-inferior beings. And the one that gets me most: the utter lack of taste in anything outside tech.You can see it in discussions here daily. Look a at the things people us”
“I think it’s what the company values. If the engineers were only valued because they make the product, then product will take over Eng. if it’s a tech product… well Eng will take over Product”
“The elite can just hire a very small portion of people, many of whom can be other elites to keep it in the system who would order LLM and the newly emerging world models and robots to make products for themselves.”
“Were you chasing the feeling of successfully solving a problem? Have you replaced problem solving with LLM chats?Maybe instead of engineering, you’ve been subtly shifted into project management and hate that career.But it’s tough to engineer much these days. Instead I find I’m PM’ing the bots more than solving problems.”
“AI's biggest issue is giving idiots confidence to do what is way above their mental capacity and no body knows who would be able to give CPR to a system that all of a sudden is out of control without anyone having any clue what's going on.”
“The really big issue is in 3-5 years when these now junior will be supervising and managing, without the acumen and judgement developed from years of grinding and making errors.”
“Glad to hear that the talk from the boosters was, as always, bullshit. Don't listen to them, they are wrong so frequently it's not even worth evaluating their claims. And the ones I've encountered have endlessly threatened me with unemployment. Also, boosters, do me a fucking favour and don't comment your nonsense below.”
“You used the wrong tool for the job and now you are terrified of the future?”
“OP I agree with you. You do sound like a senior professional asking something basic to claude. Problem is this sub is literally filled w fresh cse grads who love doomer posting about software engineering and how ai will destroy it.”
“I'm sure that will exist to some extent, but new code solutions are so cheap to churn out now that I think well-architected stuff will simply overtake the slop in the marketplace. Even in my niche hobbies I'm seeing stuff happening that way. You'll see a handful of new apps that try to solve roughly the same problem set, and it is really obvious which ones are pure auto-accept vibe code nonsense from inexperienced people, and which were thoughtfully guided by someone with a backgroun”
“Hiring is down and layoffs are up, sure. But there’s strong reasons to believe that’s because companies are diverting spending toward buying AI services and making investments in the sector. As opposed to, you know, AI actually displacing actual SWE work. Additionally, in some cases, companies are correcting for past over hiring and failed and failed products while using AI as a scapegoat”
“100%, It's gotta be skill issue or massive copium: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'”
“lmao, you're telling on yourself. pretty much any random faaang engineer (at goog meta etc) will agree with him if you talk to them in real life. to think what he's saying is in 'made it up' territory is comical to me”
“that's how they're marketed but they often quietly leave out the "prompt engineering" part”
“I remember when people said "you'll never be able to stream movies on the internet"”
“the loudest voices in either camp usually haven't shipped anything with it. it's always the quiet ones actually using the tool who have the useful take.”
“Why am I terrified? I'm terrified of how garbabe the economy will be when this bubble bursts. People telling me for years now "no bro trust me! Its the model thats the problem! You need to use a better Model bro! Then you'll see the true power of AI!" So my company gives my team access to LITERALLY the best model commercially avaliable. And what happens? I ask it how to perform a deep uninstall of Microsoft project without removing cached credentials as I already tried that and”