What are devs displaced by AI going to do in the future? Is there an actual plan?

You seem like someone who hasn't really worked in software development.

Software engineering does not simply mean coding. A production grade software application goes through analysis, design, implementation (where coding happens), testing (several phases), release and maintenance. Not to mention infrastructure concerns (storage, databases, microservices, service orchestration, middleware, etc). The whole process is too nuanced and complex to conclude that AI would make the whole career obsolete. It might shake up some areas of software engineering but only a small part of it.

You'll still need people to verify that the AI generated application actually behaves as per the business logic, runs optimally with the hardware you have and scales as your business grows. Which means engineers for testing and reviewing the generated code plus engineers to setup the infrastructure where the application will run.

You have to understand what software can do, how to design it, and how it should interact with other systems in order to write software and not just code, and AI can’t do that. If you tell it to make you A, and what you really want is B, you’ll never get what you want.

Only about 10-20 percent of my job as a software engineer is writing code. AI can be really amazing at writing code, but unless it can do the other 80-90% of my job without me, I’ll be safe.

Now, whether middle and upper management will know this is an entirely different question. A lot of them think that lines of code written is a good measure of productivity, when in fact it’s often the opposite.

I foresee there being a big struggle for management to come to grips with the fact that AI is better suited at their job than ours.

They're probably gonna laugh at the absurdity of the situation because some new popular language will come along and the AI will be back to pushing out broken code. That, or laugh because the code in well used languages will include a shit ton of vulnerabilities that wouldn't be present if real devs had to double check code before pushing it out to the public.

If it is able to replace software devs, it's probably able to replace 95% of the jobs that require mainly using your brain.

They're just gonna sit around and wait a few months until they are begged to come back and can demand more compensation. The current generative AI, which is not general AI, will not be able to replace high functioning jobs. Eventually, a lot of those software engineers will be asked back and get much more for their services.

Coding is just a part of the overall "programming" problem. Most problematic areas are in translating what the customer wants into code (requirements analysis), modifying code to overcome specific constraints, integration, etc and etc

Retire. All I ever wanted to be was a programmer. If I can’t do that anymore I’ll just retire. I’m saving/investing every penny I can just in case.

Fixing broken software some robot pushed to prod

I'm not a programmer, but I don't think I'd pay for code that was 95% accurate. That sounds buggy af

This thread is full of people comparing OPs hypothetical about 10 years from now with last year's capability.

Will AI progress that fast? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It probably won't get that good, but it doesn't matter. If it gets as good as your average junior that's going to mean something like 100% increase in productivity, which means 50% as many jobs and that's going to be a BIG FUCKING DEAL.

Especially when it's going to be replacing a lot of other types of office workers. What kind of job is your average software dev going to transition to? Tech support? Not anymore. UI Designer? LOL. Manager? And who are you going to be managing?

If the US doesn't hit 15-20% unemployment in the next 10 years I'll eat my hat. I'll be eating it either way because I'll be starving to death.

They're going to keep doing their job, good luck to some manager who thinks they can be verbose enough to get their idea across

Finally free from the Golden Handcuffs, I'd use my extra time to do something I've always wanted, like music production, which would also inevitably be taken over by AI.

Writing code is last thing you want to do as senior SWE because every line of code is potential debt and maintenence problem.
The just write code bro, figure out things later attitude is good for R&D, MVP and POC that is like 10% of job.

Just like with art, writing code like drawing is just a skill. AI is trying to replace the obvious part (that is actually the reward from thinking and describing problem in your head) because it can't replace thinking. Removing rewards bring us to depression, depression bring us to death.

Ergo AI will kill economy with no people left to replace it so we will end up to being monkas.
That's why I'd say SWE will go to farm and wait untill people in cities will start starving to death because AI stopped working and there is nobody left to fix it.

Ai-herder or Robot-farmer or Llama-raiser etc etc

devs still needed to ensure code is sane and not some insane hallucination.

The plan is to rehire them back temporarily to babysit the AI and fix all the AI generated crap. Then realize it was cheaper to actually just have the devs make code. Then hire them back at a reduced rate on a more permanent basis with the understanding that they believe the code will still be partially generated by AI and cleaned up by the same people and they aren't paying top tier for third hand AI slop.

They'll either move up the food chain to higher-touch work where AI can't compete, or they'll do other things.

Keep in mind that most devs aren't really all that good at their jobs, so it will probably be economically beneficial for them to do something else. I say this as a long-time hiring manager with many decades of experience in the field.

It can program in 15 different languages, 95% accuracy with almost no mistakes, can create entire applications in minutes

Only if you believe the hype. It can do that in best-case scenarios when the requirements are written as rigorously as code, or where it's replicating a common pattern.

Do they just become homeless?

During previous layoffs, a lot of them left the field, and some of the rest founded startups. It wasn't always the case that firms were founded by teenaged sociopaths with strong family connections to VC funding. There was a time when they were founded by people who knew how to do things.

There are a lot of dumb takes here in the comments

Developer displacement works the same way it does for any other technology

The problem is not that the job is eliminated but that fewer are needed per unit of output

My startup only has 4 engineers because we don't need 5

This trend will continue until the SV hiring bubble bursts

Spend their days (and some nights) tweaking and refining AI prompts to get the stupid thing to generate the software that the dumbass product manager wants and the user does not.

You know....

Pretty much the same thing they do now.

Why would devs be displaced by an interactive search engine?

Well if it can replace senior software engineers... Wouldn't it also be able to do almost all of the other jobs? Or are you referring to some specific future where AI advances massively, but robotics does not and handymen are still safe?

I'd say if all humans are unemployed, society would change massively. We can't really tell how that'd work. But if machines / AI do all jobs, get food on the table... I don't really know what other people would be doing. I think I'd relax and pursue a few hobbies and interests. Or it'd be some dystopia where humankind is oppressed by the machines and I'd fight for the resistance.

But regardless... In a world like that, money wouldn't work the way it does now. Neither would salaries for labor mean anything.

Welcome to being a luddite.

It's not actually about hating the progression of technology, it's realizing that your labor has been leveraged against you. You will not bear any of the true fruits, because your bosses will use the fruits of your labor to purchase the AI to replace you.

It's because the labor market is fucked and developers needed unions 20 years ago instead of thinking because they were "rockstars" and "made the big bucks" that they didn't need anybody else.

We wouldn't have to ask these kind of questions if the fruits of our labor were being equitably distributed.

Basically in the scenario described, this is what's happening to developers:

Honestly people are getting distracted here. Now lets say A.I makes developers 50% more productive thats a huge boost for smaller companies with only handful of developers.

Many companies are only thinking about reducing costs for themselves but at the same time they're freeing up a lot of talent for new and old competitors.

Here's some food for thought:

• Open source developers may use A.I to develop better software to close gap between paid alternatives. (Blender, Gimp, Krita, Linux distributions, mastodon, lemmy, pixelfed)
• Many LLM's can already be ran freely and locally. These will only get better as technology progresses. This can make selling/profiting from A.I services a lot harder
• A.I may be used to block ads or obfuscate (create bunch of fake data) user data that is sold to advertisers.
• Some media sites are already using A.I to write articles. Whats the point when users may just use chatbot to get all the information without ever engaging with the source.

These are just few that come to mind. but the unkowns with this are quite terrifying.

I was going to learn how to give a really good handjob but the AI robots will probably take over that too.

The same thing that devs displaced by all the CMSs are doing - their jobs, just with another tool in their toolkit.

Well before that level of complexity is achieved, the jobs of CEOs and Managers will be gone. Question is, will the Ai CEO really want to risk the safety of a review, knowing that it IS the company. Pump and Dump won't do it any more. Then CEOs need to actually work for their money. (Or well... get replaced by an Ai)

Riot.

Homemade pornography, obviously.

But actually, I'll limit myself to fixing deployment pipelines, correcting business specification mistakes, helping business leaders understand how computers work at all, mitigating moderate security issues, and finding a new job when the unmitigated severe security issues drive my employer bankrupt.

So essentially, exactly how I spend my day today, but with less typing.

And more nude photography, of course.

As a dev, there's still quite a bit ai can't do and will most likely not be able to do.

AI is good at solving old problems but it's not trained on anything new. Its good at boilerplate and templates, but not good at original material. If it gets tremendously better, and really does get to the point where it's better than we are at development, then the industry will shift into prompt engineering. But I can see a huge reduction of jobs.

Ultimately we need to prepare for a future where the majority of jobs have been automated and need a way to keep the economy going. Everyone being employed full time is just something that is not sustainable on the long term as technology progresses. We'll eventually need UBI because otherwise all the money will be transferred to nearly fully automated companies controlling basically everything. We just won't be able to keep everyone employed without creating a massive amount of bullshit jobs nobody really wants to do. The better way is UBI and people going into research or creative works, and aim higher like space travel.

We're not quite ready yet and people are way too invested in capitalism for this to work just yet. But it will become a necessity eventually. It's not just affecting IT, it's affecting all sectors: we can basically 3D print houses now, we're not far off automating farming either. We will reach a point where most of society has been automated, we can feed everyone effortlessly.

Then I'll train my own model to make others lose their jobs, too. I bet an AI will then be able to do all calculations a civil engineer can do. Or manage any project.

They'll get jobs as contractors fixing shitty AI code

I'll take what money I have stashed away and buy a nice secluded parcel of property with dummy low taxes away from people.

I'll grow my own food, hunt, forage, etc.

I'll do odd jobs to fill in the gaps when needed. anything from tech consulting to roof repairs.

I'll refuse to use any technology unless a job requires it.

and I'll wait for the inevitable collapse of technological society because a vulnerability was baked into the AI every company is using and nobody knows how to fix it.

I refuse to be a part of a system that denies me a seat at the table.

That's something that we're probably going to have to figure out quickly. We won't though given the lack of accountability of those in power.

If SWEs are losing their jobs you can imagine a lot of other white collar workers will be as well. This would mean you will be competing with many other people in other fields. The large number of unemployed will reduce demand for goods produced by those companies that are also laying off workers due to automation.

This is a bit of a tragedy of the commons where companies adopt the technology to increase profits but actually disrupt the economy, potentially leading to their own collapse.

It's impossible to really prepare for this scenario because it requires you to simultaneously be ready for retirement in the next few years but also riots. I'm just hoping for the best for now.

Plan? The CEOs plan to buy another yacht. These people are only interested in short term profits, not the long term well-being of their employees.

Who tells the AI what to create? And how well does the AI understand the exact thing the person is attempting to do?

It would be no different than prompt engineers now knowing exactly what the say/type in order to get the image output they want.

That prompt work would be a kind of programming code in upon itself.