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How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

#21

Post by kilroy123 »

kypro wrote: post #20
kilroy123 wrote: post #18

I saw the writing on the wall when ChatGPT was first released. I'm a good 2 years into a pivot to become an online creator who makes weird web experiences and content. I am knee deep in a challange to build 25 projects in 25 weeks. I'm working on project #20 today. I hope to build an audience through Patreon, sponsorships, and monetizing some of the projects. Maybe a micro SaaS or two? Maybe a newsletter or two?

> Maybe a micro SaaS or two? Maybe a newsletter or two? No offence, but I'm not sure a pivot into micro SaaS software development or newsletter writing is much of a plan for AI job destruction.

Probably right, but I'd rather be 1-2 years into figuring this out than starting now. I have a lot of traction and I've built up an audience.

Re: How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

#22

Post by ActorNightly »

Ive been a super early adopter of AI. I basically had something like an MCP server up in the early days of Chat GPT (basically a bunch of prompts that guided the model to spit out specific data for the wrapper to catch and execute).

I can safely say that the way things are heading, AI is not going to take my job as a software engineer. Nobody is building AI. Everyone is building effectively explicitly coded agents that all still generally can't reason.

The only thing that AI has improved is the time from knowing what you want to getting it into working code. Which is significant. But for any time improvements that this gives, it also means that things can be written wrong faster, which means more time spent later on undoing it.

Re: How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

#25

Post by dakiol »

So, in the 80s it took around a year and a half for a team of ~10 people to develop Pac-Man (Namco). Nowadays it probably would take any engineer between a day and a weekend to develop it solo. Does that mean engineers are out of jobs? No. Things get easier to be developed, but humans always want more. So in X years when developing a Figma may take one or two guys and a week of development effort, the society will expect "better" (more complex) software. And there I will be ready to develop such software (using AI probably like yet another tool). The AI available in X years will probably do wonders but won't be a silver bullet to develop the software required in such days. Our needs are always ahead of what the technology can provide, that's why technology keeps evolving. It's silly to thing that we'll reach a ceiling and that a given tech will do everything from that point onwards.

Re: How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

#26

Post by dakiol »

Jabbs wrote: post #23

From my data of ~1.8M jobs, "Software Engineer" as a job title in postings are down ~25% and "Senior Software Engineer" jobs are down ~10% comparing the first 2 months of 2026 with 2025

Wondering what the data would say if you compare it to the numbers in 2015. It definitely feels there are more jobs now (at least from my POV)

Re: How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

#27

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dakiol wrote: post #25

So, in the 80s it took around a year and a half for a team of ~10 people to develop Pac-Man (Namco). Nowadays it probably would take any engineer between a day and a weekend to develop it solo. Does that mean engineers are out of jobs? No. Things get easier to be developed, but humans always want more. So in X years when developing a Figma may take one or two guys and a week of development effort, the society will ex…

> So, in the 80s it took around a year and a half for a team of ~10 people to develop Pac-Man (Namco). Nowadays it probably would take any engineer between a day and a weekend to develop it solo.

Including hardware? For that matter, developing the software on the hardware it had would not be a weekend job.

If you mean "develop it using current tools on current hardware", then yes, it might be doable in a weekend, maybe even a day.

But I think I agree with your overall point. Better tools let us level up. We get to do harder things. We've got cancer to cure, and Alzheimer's, and space to conquer. We're not going to get there by writing assembly for Z80s, so to speak. We need to move up.

Re: How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

#28

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jryan49 wrote: post #11

IMHO no one know what the heck is going to happen. Probably will have to adapt to the situation as needed... In other words, it's too hard to predict to come up with a plan ahead of time?

At a time like this, don't put all your eggs in one basket. So maybe come up with a plan to get more baskets.

What would that look like? Well, I've seen the statement that you can become a licensed phlebotomist (one who draws blood) for $500. That gives you an option that is not "write code until I get laid off". (Of course, in a true AI takeover, we're going to have blood-drawing robots eventually, so it's not a permanent fix.)

More generally, even if software stays around forever, you may not be doing the same kind of software for your whole career. (I have done both internet security software and embedded systems.) You almost certainly won't be at the same company for your whole career. Keep learning new things, and keep your eyes open for new opportunities. Right now is more scary than it often is, but we have always needed to keep our eyes open for what we'll do next.

Re: How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

#29

Post by andyjohnson0 »

marssaxman wrote: post #15

I plan to do the same thing I did the last several times new automation took my old job: carry right along making software. Jevons' paradox tells us that AI will create more demand for software than ever. I see no threat to my career here.

> Jevons' paradox tells us that AI will create more demand for software than ever. I see no threat to my career here.

AI will also create essentially infinite supply with, if you believe the predictions, little if any need for human contributions.

Re: How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?

#30

Post by Jabbs »

dakiol wrote: post #26
Jabbs wrote: post #23

From my data of ~1.8M jobs, "Software Engineer" as a job title in postings are down ~25% and "Senior Software Engineer" jobs are down ~10% comparing the first 2 months of 2026 with 2025

Wondering what the data would say if you compare it to the numbers in 2015. It definitely feels there are more jobs now (at least from my POV)

Yea totally agree, would like a 10+ year chart. I only had good data from the beginning of 2025
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