Programming

It's the Dunning-Kruger effect.

And it's fostered by an massive amount of spam and astroturfing coming from "AI" companies, lying that LLMs are good at this or that. Sure, algorithms like neural networks can recognize patterns. Algorithms like backtracking can play chess or solve or transform algebraic equations. But these are not LLMs and LLMs will not and can not replace software engineering.

Sure, companies want to pay less for programming. But they don't pay for software developers to generate some gibberish in source code syntax, they need working code. And this is why software engineers and good programmers will not only remain scarce but will become even shorter in supply.

And companies that don't pay six-figure salaries to developers will find that experienced developers will flat out refuse to work on AI-generated codebases, because they are unmaintainable and lead to burnout and brain rot.

To be honest, you sound like you’re only just starting to learn to code.

I definitely am. But I have no doubts that ai is going to take a lot of entry-level type jobs soon, and eventually higher end jobs.

We'll always need good, smart coders. Just not as many as we have now.

but it’s not obvious to people who don’t have that skill and so we now spend a lot of time telling bosses “no, that’s not actually correct”.

I get it. But those clueless people are gonna be the people in charge of hiring, and they'll decide to hire less, and expect current staff to do more. I've seen in hundreds of time in industries, and it's already happening now in yours.

For context, I'm old. So I've seen your arguments in many different industries.

And to your point, they'll have ai replacing good people, long before ai is good enough to. But you're approaching the issue with logic. Corporate lacks a lot of logic.

I'm already seeing it in your industry. Plenty of reddit/Lemmy posts talking about how coders have been laid off, and having a much much more difficult time getting another job than at any point in their careers.

Again, I'm saying AI is a good solution. I'm saying management will think that. Just like they did when they offshored jobs to much less skilled, yet way more inexpensive workers.

To copy what someone else in this thread said:

The idea that AI will some day be good at coding isn’t the issue. The issue is that some people in management think it’s already well on the way to being a good substitute, and they’re trying to do more with fewer coders to everyone’s detriment.