this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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The thing about software is that once it does replace a technical job, it replaces basically the whole industry. Physical machines at least generated new jobs building and configuring the individual new machines. Software doesn't need to be built each time, and the better AI gets the less necessary configuration is.
AI engineers, in general, are in the future, sure. But don't be fooled into thinking that all engineers are that far in the future. All AI has to do is replace the majority, with a few senior engineers to give their work a once-over. It's not about total replacement, it's about decimation.
I believe it will take at least 15-20 years before the majority of engineers can be replaced. I do agree it will happen eventually. But my point wasn't about what will happen in the future. It was about whether engineers are losing their jobs due to AI at the present moment, as the article claims.
Yeah 15-20 feels right. But I'm talking about the bottom up. When AI replaces people, it'll start with the junior roles doing grunt work. I would not be surprised if entry level engineering positions are currently beginning to be displaced, or at minimum new openings evaporating.
I disagree. There are tons of software improvements that reduce the amount of grunt / unnecessary work devs do all the time, and I never hear or see anything about layoffs due to those.
Update from using Python / JS / C / Java to using Rust? You're going to be way more productive long term because you're not nonstop debugging shitty runtime issues and ancient legacy XML based configurations nobody knows about. Does that mean we lay people off since we're way more efficient now? No.