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.