AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
semiengineering.com
AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
1–10 of 231 posts
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#2I’ve noticed teams don’t replace engineers, they redistribute work. Senior engineers often gain leverage while junior roles shift toward tooling and review.
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#3Mostly reads like another abstraction shift, not a sudden replacement of engineers.
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#4I still feel like with all of these tools I as a senior engineer have to keep a close eye on what they're doing. Like an exuberant junior (myself 10 years ago), inevitably they still go off the rails and I need to reign them in. They still make the occasional security or performance flaw - often which can be resolved by pointing it out.
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#5I think one thing here is, don't be fooled by past performance. Capabilities ramp, usage can't mature until capability plates.
I fear the true impact is much different than extrapolating current trends.
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#6I 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.
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#7I 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.
Then don't.
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#8I still feel like with all of these tools I as a senior engineer have to keep a close eye on what they're doing. Like an exuberant junior (myself 10 years ago), inevitably they still go off the rails and I need to reign them in. They still make the occasional security or performance flaw - often which can be resolved by pointing it out.
I keep hearing about how they're "really good" now, but my personal experience has been that I've always had to clear sessions and give them small "steps" to execute for them to work effectively. thankfully claude seems really good at creating "plans", though. so I just need claude code to walk through that plan in small chunks.
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#9The main thing to understand about the impact of AI tools:
Somehow the more senior you are [in the field of use], the better results you get. You can run faster and get more done! If you're good, you get great results faster. If you're bad, you get bad results faster.
You still gotta understand what you're doing. GeLLMan Amnesia is real.
Re: AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected
#10Senior 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't even be bothered to set up my Claude environment. I swear when this contract is over I'm opening a mobile food cart.