I have been reading a lot that 90% of their code is AI generated, companies are pushing developers to use AI as it makes them fast. But I am a little cautious of believing them. Is it true? Also sorry I didn’t find a css career subreddit so I am asking here.
If you are a senior level dev you will spend less time writing your own code than ai and you will understand it better, and will not slowly lose your critical thinking skills in the process.
I am still more productive not using ai than anyone else on my team who uses it.
AI sucks in my domain. One of our competitors uses it and they say they get amazing results when senior people use the tools but can’t give theml to juniors because they keep messing up.
I’m glad it doesn’t work in my niche to be honest. I’m in the frontlines debugging broken code and the last thing I need is bloat. This would actually slow me down a lot. I find it pretty shitty at diagnosing even small pieces of code, and I can’t try stuff like Claude Code because I’m not allowed to transfer some of the code we use to rhe cloud because it’s under NDAs. But if it can’t get the simple stuff right, I can’t trust it with the keys to our Lambo.
I stay informed about it all to know when/if I should quit software engineering and do something else, but it seems fine so far. It looks like I won’t be able to take it easy in the future and go back to pissing web application code, which means less opportunities, but oh well.
Oh and I do know two companies that mandate LLM usage. Somebody from my current company left for one of thoses and hates it.
AI does not have a foothold in my area, because it still takes far more time to understand what it did, and debug it. Faster to just do it ourselves.
However, there are some programming jobs where people can use what it makes without checking much, or understanding what it does. And while this probably has some cost to pay down the line, if it gets the job done today, then everyone wins.
I know some freelancers, and small shops, that make a lot of money untangling the code made by the above.
Not there yet at my company, but management is starting to shove AI down the throats of the more senior engineers at first. I’ve definitely heard of companies where they strictly push for as much AI as possible which is just completely self destructive and delusional.
It sucks that we have to use this crap even if we don’t want it or need it just because the suits see the line go up (even if the line is completely made up of garbage code that will explode one day), but that doesn’t mean you should quit the field. There’s still plenty work to be done, and that will probably go upwards as the symptoms of reckless AI usage start showing up.
The work is worse by all means, you are encouraged or forced to work in a way that strips all enjoyment away, you are forced to nitpick code made by others that you know vibe coded the entire thing, and fixing tons of stupid as hell bugs that a human would probably not make. But still, it takes an actual engineer that knows what they’re doing to be able to clean up that mess and do some actual engineering.
What I fear the most is what comes after the pre-AI senior engineers start leaving or going to retirement, and you’re left with engineers who finished their degrees without ever truly diving into details like one would before AI, starting jobs without learning properly and picking up all the domain knowledge.
Just gonna leave this here.
It’s been creeping slowly into my workplace over the past year. I’ve gotten by without using it myself so far, but there’s been a soft push by management for developers to use AI in their daily work. Experienced devs with a measured approach to AI (“it’s not a silver bullet, but incredibly and increasingly useful”) are given a platform, while AI skeptics are quietly ignored.
Management says they don’t plan on replacing engineers with AI, but it’s hard not to get that impression when a draft for an upcoming company AI meeting has a heading titled “A Bigger Department Without Hiring a Bigger Department”.
My company gave us access to AI tools and encourage us to use them, but nothing is forced, which is nice. I like using Claude for light scripting, explaining bits of code, and as a second set of eyes during review.
If you have AI generate all of your code, you’re going to have a bad time. But if you’re completely against AI and unwilling to use it, you’re probably going to be left in the dust.
Ah the centrist approach. 🙄
It’s valid stance. I use it in a similar way as do many devs.
Claude is built into VS and is good for spot checks and review. I will go days without using it, but it’s a more context aware stack overflow. I have no expectations to use any AI tools and our CISO said the other day that he’s hard blocking Claude code.
I would be happy if all AI disappeared, but I’ll lightly use the tools to support my work since they’re there. I don’t use it for code generation but will sometimes accept auto complete comments.
Its always fascinating that most devs aren’t more frustrated about the wholesale theft of their jobs and things code produced.
Doubly so when it’s all done with the intention of making you obsolete
Linters have existed for a long time. They were the original AI that generated code. Using AI to supplement work in a similar manner isn’t replacing devs. Being able to search for answers like one would Google only not needing to leave your IDE and having it be semi context aware is not what’s replacing devs. Trash like Claude code and people that are generating entire dogshit apps is what’s replacing devs. I’m not defending the latter, just explaining the “centrist” approach to using AI.
In general, I hate AI. I wish it would all go away, but it’s not going to. If every other dev is using AI in their workflow and you aren’t, you’re falling behind in production, which in the business world is the only thing that matters, or you’re a great dev and don’t make mistakes where searching Claude for answers is faster than searching the web.
If you don’t like AI tools, then don’t use them. While it’s there and a sunk cost, I’m going to use it for help when I need it. I can still be critical of it but understand it’s here to stay, so I adapt.
Linters have existed for a long time. They were the original AI that generated code. Using AI to supplement work in a similar manner isn’t replacing devs.
So I’vw never used a linter that generates code. I’ve used them to enforce code styles but never to generate code. And code generation isn’t really the point there.
Second. AI isn’t replacing devs? The massive layoffs in the tech sector would disagree. Its also not “dogshit apps”. Google claims 90% of their code is generated and Microsoft claims 30% both come coupled with massive layoffs. To be fair Microsoft is kinda dogshit and Google search sucks now. But googles apps remain higher quality.
If the centrist argument is just to shrug and say “I guess we’re stuck with it”. I guess I’d say you aren’t a centrist and are a tacit supporter of ai.
This is the only sane answer here, and it makes sense because of the sentiment on Lemmy.
There is one constant rule about software engineering. You must be adaptable. The career is ever changing, you need to be okay with that. I think a lot of people right now are finding out that if they dig in their heels they think they’re making a point, but the company doesn’t care, there’s the door. AI is just another change in the career. Adapt, or be left behind.
The job isn’t the same as it was 5 years ago, which also was different than it was 10 years before that, and then 10 years before that. I’ll say this is a large change, but that’s the job.
I think the biggest thing is there’s no room for “I’m a react engineer” anymore. Everyone needs to be everything, and it means learn as much as you can as fast as you can. You must be a “T-shaped” engineer. Wide breadth, with specific deep knowledge that makes you stand out. You can be an expert at react, but should also know how to code in the backend, and how to deploy, how to work with APIs, some basic cloud architecture. If you’re not learning, you’re falling behind.
It’s what makes being a developer a double edged sword. I’m always learning new skills, architectures, languages, and technologies all of the time, which is great. Management wanting me to know it last year to complete today’s new work yesterday is not so great. You have to stay on your toes and learn (and understand) new tech or someone else will.
Agree, and I think it’s funny someone downvoted you because that’s always been the case, AI didn’t change that. It’s just now we’re seeing the next evolution and we’ll see who sticks around and who doesn’t.
Evolve or die. Some people don’t like to hear that I guess. It is what it is.
Just like human code generation, you need to review what’s being generated.
AI can speed up the writing of code but humans need to review it. Even if it’s always right humans doing a review will help generate new useful ideas for future improvements. Having AI do everything isn’t good, but using it to augment the process is incredible.
If you have AI generate all of your code, you’re going to have a bad time
I agree with “all”, but the percentage AI can do usefully is increasing quickly and depends a lot on your having written down and documented everything the super-smart-sometimes-hallucinating new employee needs to know.
Run. Run while you still can.
I recently lost my job because I didn’t want to use AI to write 50-100% of my code as my boss requested.
I technically can’t say I lost my job because of AI as they told me they were laying me off due to restructuring, but a week after I was laid off they were hiring for my exact same skillset with a different title and the caveat that the applicant must use AI to write code. So you do the math.
Dude😭. Where can I even run now? I would be graduating next month
i wonder about fresh graduates and how they’re going to survive this job market.
i graduated with an electrical engineering related degree, but it was immediately after the dot com bubble burst so there were no jobs in my field to be had, but i got lucky and found one doing IT and (at the time) there was still strong a enough demand for software development that my IT experience was deemed “good enough” to allow me to enter the field.
22 years later, i got burned out by the culture that software engineers tend to gravitate towards and pivoted back to IT at a non-profit that serves lower & middle income students. i’ve had to work with some of them as part of work-study sort of thing and every single one of them is sharp af – much more than i was at that age and especially so when it comes to ai – but i see every single one of them (justifiably) freak out about their prospects and i feel for them based on my own experiences.
the colleagues at my new firm have been doing this for 30+ years and have never faced layoffs, downsizing, restructuring, etc. and their callous attitude towards fresh grads wrestling this specter is weighing on me just as much as the dominant i’ve-got-mine-fuck-you type of culture that software engineers tend to adopt when in the field.
A friend of mine graduated some years ago from a good uni. He transitioned quickly from actually writing code to just reviewing AI written code. He hates it, and its got to the point he has automated the reviewing process as well. He’s floated the idea of getting into nursing from how much he hates it.
He used to be very passionate about it.
I relate w you though. I graduated from Graphic Design the week midjourney took off. It’s been… Rough.
Dude, I am guilty of writing entire projects with AI. I am not exaggerating, it literally feels like brain rot. Yeah people say now devs have time for high level design but bro, you need experience to know about high level design. Like, I can think of hundred of different ways to design something, but all hundred would be shit compared to what a knowledgeable person would build. Also it won’t be the job most people like
It’s not going to be immediate, but skilled devs are going to be in demand in a few years when the seniors with experience retire and the juniors that never learned to properly code can’t senior.
There are jobs out there, and you’ll probably at the very least have AI tools to use with varying levels of requirements. I have tools but don’t have any expectations to use them. I transitioned from sysadmin to RPA developer to full stack over the past few years with no prior professional dev experience, just one year at Uni and some self learning. So there are spots out there for actual dev graduates.
Here’s the kicker… It’s more about who you know than what you know. Your best bet to get a job is to network and get some sort of referral. Your reference gets your resume read, your resume gets you in the door, and you degree + reference get you a job.
Consider research or academia.
Or on the other end, go into setting up networks & hardware.
Computer science isn’t going away. Computer programming is.
Transition from code to data.
I don’t wanna be choosy, but working to make models smarter does feel like digging my own grave
Not at all what I mean. Working with data has nothing to do with models. Models consume data, but so does everything else.
Right now we are drowning in data. With the AI hype, companies now want to retain their data longer, but optimizing the processing and retreival of said data is an essential art that AI is currently very bad at. Data centers are adding processing power to tgeir infrastructure, but IO is still a massive bottle neck.
Writing code was never 100% of the job. The hard part of software engineering is understanding the problem and figuring out the most elegant path to solve it. If AI can do the code-writing part faster, then it’s a good tool to use.
I still spend a third of my week in meetings. I put out on-call fires late at night.
I also spend a good chunk of my time interviewing potential hires. I pretty much expect them to use AI for their code assignments. Including prompt history is a plus if they do. What I do gauge is their ability to explain their code, defend the decisions and know how to adapt to changing circumstances.
I know how to get to this point by starting a couple of decades ago. I do recognise that I don’t have the same grasp of our codebase as if I had written it by hand. I do review everything that gets deployed, but the volume is higher and it doesn’t stick as well.
I don’t know how to get in as a jr today. We’ll know in a few years how it’s done. It’s a new landscape, but if you’re passionate about the field you’ll figure it out.
A lot of the major companies are trying to “embrace” AI. Anyone saying percentages is full of shit. And anyone claiming they got fired for refusing to use AI is also full of shit, they got fired for other reasons, which much have been screaming “I’ll never use AI you fucks!” Haha
Regarding the industry as a whole, AI is a big thing. You need to know how to use it correctly to (hopefully) produce quality code. This is a really rough time in the industry, for many reasons not at all related to AI. The economy is shit, globally. There is a lot of uncertainty, globally. Jobs are absolutely not secure. I’ve been laid off 3 times since 2020. And no, I wasn’t the only layoff. One company got rid of all their IT staff save for the IT director and one (overworked) support technician.
If you’re asking because you want to go into software as a career…………… don’t. Go into healthcare.
You’re lucky it hasn’t happened to you. Yet. I never was a “I’ll never use AI you fucks” type person, more of a “AI written code is not trustworthy by default and should be subject to human review, especially if it touches critical systems, to ensure it’s secure and won’t just blindly wipe out production” type. Even that didn’t agree with their stance.
My former boss literally said to me “AI is so advanced that you do not need to see the code to write it anymore”. That is not true, willfully ignorant, and the equivalent of slamming on the gas on the freeway and closing your eyes. Fuck anyone who believes that.
Well, I don’t have a problem using AI. But I also don’t work for big tech companies with the kind of culture who push it on you. Also, I’m collecting an unemployment check after being laid off because the company can’t afford two developers anymore. So I dunno how lucky I am.
Your former boss is an idiot! Haha
I am graduating next month 🥲. A little too late for me to switch careers
Well… good luck. I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I’ll work for your salary. ;)
Healthcare IT is still ok, but seriously DON’T be an actual healthcare worker. Your basically a slave with 5-6 figure college debt
Strong disagree. Getting your BSN is not 6 figures. It also far more stable than tech. There will always be sick people, the world is not getting healthier on average.
Going into software development in 2026 is a gamble. Being a nurse is not.
