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AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

semiengineering.com

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Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#161

Post by bayarearefugee »

SecretDreams wrote: post #32
xXSLAYERXx wrote: post #10

Senior dev here 15 years experience just turned 50 have family blah blah. I've been contracting for the last two years. The org is just starting to use Claude. I've been delegating - well copy pasting - into chatgpt which has to be the laziest way to leverage AI. I've been so successful (meaning haven't had to do anything really except argue with chatgpt when it goes off on some tangent) with this approach that I can…

> I swear when this contract is over I'm opening a mobile food cart. This is the way. I think I'd like to be a barista or deliver the mail once all the jobs are gone.

> I think I'd like to be a barista

If/when AI wipes out the white collar "knowledge worker" jobs who is going to be able to afford going to the coffee shop?

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#162

Post by tylerflick »

Lramseyer wrote: post #44
tracerbulletx wrote: post #6

I am very tired of seeing every random person's speculation (framed as real insight) on what's going to happen as they try to signify that they are super involved in AI and super on top of it and therefore still worthy of value and importance in the economy.

You have to understand the people in the article are execs from the chip EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industry. It's full of dinosaurs who have resisted innovation for the past 30 years. Of course they're going to be blowing hot air about how they're "embracing AI". It's a threat to their business model. I'm a little biased though since I work in chip design and I maintain an open source EDA project. I agree wi…

Wake me when the auto-router works.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#163

Post by jimbo808 »

skydhash wrote: post #157
likium wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So set up e2e tests and make sure it does things you said you wanted. Just like how you use a library or database. Trust, but verify. Only if it breaks do you have to peak under the covers. Sadly people do not care about redundant and verbose code. If that was a concern, we wouldn't have 100+mb of apps, nor 5mb web app bundles. Multibillion b2b apps shipping a 10mb json file just for searching emojis and no one blink…

The effort to set up e2e tests can be more than just writing the thing. Especially for UI as computers just does not interpret things as humans do (spatial relation, overflow, low to no contrast between elements).

Also, the assumption that you can do ___ thing (tests, some dumb agent framework, some prompting trick), and suddenly magically all of the problems with LLMs vanish, is very wrong and very common.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#164

Post by sp1982 »

I am tracking AI mentions in jobs - https://jobswithgpt.com/blog/ai_jobs_jan_2026/.

I see some evidence that hardware roles expect you to leverage AI tools but not sure why it'd eliminate junior roles. I expect the bar on what you can do raise at every level.

Example job mentioning AI: https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/Sandisk/744000104267635-tec...

Technologist, ASIC Development Engineering – Sandisk …CPU complex, DDR, Host, Flash, Debug, Clocks, resets, Power domains etc. Familiarity in leveraging AI tools, including GitHub Copilot, for design and development.

Entry level: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/spacex/jobs/8390171002?gh_j...

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#165

Post by drivebyhooting »

daxfohl wrote: post #104
mrsilencedogood wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software will ALWAYS be an attractive VC target. The economics are just too good. The profit margins are just inherently fat as fuck compared to literally anything else. Your main expense is headcount and the incremental cost of your widget is ~$0? It's literally a dream. It's also why so much of AI is targeting software, specifically SAAS. A SaaS company with ~0 headcount driven by AI is basically 100% profit margin…

Yeah for the better part of a generation, our best and brightest minds have been wasted on "increasing click count". If that can all be AI from here on out, then maybe we can get actual humans working on the real problems again.

The problem was always funding. All those bright minds went into ads because it paid well. Cancer research, space, propulsion, clean, energy, etc.. none of those paid particularly well. Nor would they have afforded a comfortable life with a house and family. The evisceration of SWE does not guarantee a flourishing in other fields. On the contrary, increased labor supply with further pressure, wages, downwards.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#167

Post by zmj »

SoftTalker wrote: post #33

"Most people who drive cars now couldn’t find the radiator cap if they were paid to, and that’s fine." That's not fine IMO. That is a basic bit of knowledge about a car and if you don't know where the radiator cap is you will eventually have to pay through the nose to someone who does know (and possibly be stranded somewhere). Knowing how to check and fill coolant isn't like knowing how to rebuild a transmission. It'…

Paying money to abstract over lower level concerns is civilization.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#168

Post by confidantlake »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #161
SecretDreams wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I swear when this contract is over I'm opening a mobile food cart. This is the way. I think I'd like to be a barista or deliver the mail once all the jobs are gone.

> I think I'd like to be a barista If/when AI wipes out the white collar "knowledge worker" jobs who is going to be able to afford going to the coffee shop?

The one guy who owns everything.

Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected

#170

Post by confidantlake »

cxvwbvb wrote: post #149
pwarner wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think this is a good way to think about it. I mean Google, MSFT for example have effectively unlimited developers, and their products still suck in some areas (Teams is my number one worst) so maybe AI will allow them to upgrade their features and compete

ermmm youre missing a bigger point. MSFT, GOOG et al have an enormous army of engineers. And yet, they dont seem to be continually releasing one hit product after another. Why is that? Because writing lines of code is not the bottleneck of continually producing and bringing new products to market. Its crazy to me how people are missing the point with all this.

It is so depressing that teams won despite being worse than pretty much every other chat application just because MSFT bundled it with office.
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