Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career • Hacker News Board

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#281

Post by flatline » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #248

KronisLV wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, about 2-5% of the time. There are also those for whom that percentage is higher, let’s say 6-50%. > I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions The AI is coming for that too. You might just be lucky to be in circumstances that value your contributions or an industry or domain that isn’t well represented in the training data, or problem spaces too complex for AI. Not everyone is, not ev…

>> I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions > The AI is coming for that too. If this is true, then you'd have to conclude that AI is coming for everything . I'm still not convinced by that. But I am convinced that the part of software development that involves typing code manually into an IDE all day is likely gone forever.

It really doesn't have to come for everything to feel like it's taking everything. If it eliminates 10% of white collar jobs over the next decade, the impact will be felt everywhere.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#282

Post by eska » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

therealdrag0 wrote: post #261

bborud wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you, perchance, assuming that since you spend most of your time struggling with actual code, this is so for everyone else? Or are you saying that I'm lying. That I am secretly hammering away at my keyboard while pretending not to? No, writing code hasn't been how I spend most of my time for many decades now.

Are you a staff level engineer that has dozens of other engineers banging away at code projects you help define?

Try to write a design doc before you implement something (which people find they need to do for LLMs to work at all anyway). You’ll find that you spend much less time actually writing code.

Write proper API documentation laying out the assumptions and intent, generate some good API docs, write a design and architecture document (which people find they need for LLMs to work at all anyway). You’ll find that you spend a lot less time reading code.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#283

Post by Aperocky » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

itsafarqueue wrote: post #271

Aperocky wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The AI is coming for that too. That's where we fundamentally disagree about. Yes, AI is coming for solution formulation, absolutely, but not all of it, because it is actually a statistical machine with context limit. Until the day LLMs are not statistical machine with a context limit, this will hold. Someone need to make something that has intent and purpose, and evidently now not by adding another 10T to the LLM p…

Yours is a “God of the gaps” argument. You will remain technically correct (the best kind of correct!) long after the statistical machine has subsumed your practical argument, context limit and all.

I fall into the "pessimistic heavy user" camp, I burn thousands of $ worth of SOTA tokens monthly but it just makes me more acutely aware of the limitation and amount of work I need to do to work around them and what kind of decision that I should reserve to myself instead of trusting the LLMs to do.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#284

Post by bborud » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

therealdrag0 wrote: post #261

bborud wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you, perchance, assuming that since you spend most of your time struggling with actual code, this is so for everyone else? Or are you saying that I'm lying. That I am secretly hammering away at my keyboard while pretending not to? No, writing code hasn't been how I spend most of my time for many decades now.

Are you a staff level engineer that has dozens of other engineers banging away at code projects you help define?

It has varied over the years but it isn't actually relevant since I am talking about when I write software.

Writing code just isn't what takes time.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#285

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

[deleted]

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#286

Post by malfist » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

cromka wrote: post #168

PunchyHamster wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The AI is coming for that too. Current AI tech giants prove over and over and over again that this is not the case

We've literally just started, what "over and over" do you refer to?

I've been told the past four years that AI is coming for my job. And thats just not true. Its no closer to that than it was 4 years ago.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#287

Post by hylaride » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #73

HighGoldstein wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haven't most people looked around and asked themselves where are all the 50+ engineers? They basically don't exist in large numbers. I'm not discounting ageism in the industry, but how popular of a career was it 30+ years ago compared to now?

In 1996? Software development was the hot ticket to upper middle class in the early 80s when I was a recent CS grad, and I was already working with people who were in it for the money. By the late 90s, if you could spell “HTML”, you were making decent money as a web developer. This all came crashing down during the Dot Bomb collapse, but SW has been pretty popular for most of my career, and it just continued to get m…

I remember seeing an article around a decade ago about a ~50 year old "web developer" claiming age discrimination because they couldn't get a job. Somebody found their resume and it was literally 1990s "html/CSS" added to some other period tooling. Said person found a niche for a new technology (the web) and then stopped upping their skills.

I've had to change course several times in my career (graduated in 2004). UNIX admin and later network admin, DevOps, and now I'm doing a mixture of DevOps and development (despite not being a full time developer in my entire career, being able to use AI to plug into code and fix/enhance things like monitoring, leveraging cloud APIs, etc has been a game changer for me).

Right now, as somebody in their mid 40s, I'm seeing AI as a productivity amplifier. I am able to take my experience and steer and/or fight opus into doing what's needed and am able to recognize if it looks right.

I'm so glad I'm not fresh out of school in this environment, though people said the same thing when I graduated in the Dotcom bust...but being ready and eager to do groundwork was a door opener. Finding that first door to open was tough, though.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#288

Post by m463 » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

  - Compilers will make developers irrelevant
  ...
  - Compilers can write assembly language code

  - Compilers have -O3 now

etc...

Maybe we should rejoice. I remember dreading writing documentation, and now I would happily hand that off to AI.

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#289

Post by at-fates-hands » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #101

bborud wrote: post #67

Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…

> Yes, about 2-5% of the time. There are also those for whom that percentage is higher, let’s say 6-50%. > I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions The AI is coming for that too. You might just be lucky to be in circumstances that value your contributions or an industry or domain that isn’t well represented in the training data, or problem spaces too complex for AI. Not everyone is, not ev…

>> Or bosses will just expect more output for same/less pay, with them having to use AI to keep up.

Anecdotal evidence to support this.

I work with both dev and design teams. Upper management has already gone through several layoffs and offshoring of the two dev teams I work with. The devs they did keep were exactly what you said. The capable ones who reliably closed their Jira tickets. Never missed a deadline for building their features or components. And now? Their work has tripled and now the only help they get from management? "Start to figure out how to leverage AI, we're going to be a in hiring freeze for the next 10 months."

The double whammy of losing onshore team members and not getting any help from management to fix the problem they just created and essentially just telling them to figure out how to use AI to keep up is pretty staggering.

I would echo what one of the devs told me, "If this is the new "AI era" than you can count me right the fuck out of it."

Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career

#290

Post by bel8 » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:21 PM UTC

Schiendelman wrote: post #275

bel8 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when a senior can do the job of 6 coworkers, what do you suppose will happen to the coworkers? In farming, those who were replaced by tractors did not keep their jobs. What is different now?

They build tractors, or sell tractors, or work in agricultural research and development...

I highly doubt that a significant portion of farm labor became salesman or researchers. Builders? I could see that but robots already replaced a portion of those too.