Tell HN: I am afraid AI will take my job at some point | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: I am afraid AI will take my job at some point

24 pointsfunnyfoobar39 comments

I have been doing software for a living for the past 10 years or so.

I can call myself an average senior engineer. Cannot really pass the DSA rounds at Tier 1/Tier 2.

Somehow was able to keep the jobs I had so far via pure bruteforce and hard work.

These days I am pair programming with AI to write a lot of code. Probably checking in about 10 to 15k lines of code per month on average. I know it may not be a good metric, but if I compare myself to an earlier verision of me, that person would be checking in a 2 or 3 k lines of code at best per month.

I can get the work done, probably can do a bit of good judgement when AI writes sloppy code.

But, I am not sure till when these skills will be relevant

Like what if that judgement is not needed anymore, like 2-3 years down the line?

Is anyone else in the same boat? How are you dealing with this?

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Writing from rural Japan.

You are witnessing the "Hyper-inflation of Syntax." If you measure your worth by LOC (Lines of Code), you are right to be afraid. AI has driven the cost of syntax to near zero.

But here is what I see in my work with old Japanese manufacturers (Shinise): When "Crafting" becomes cheap, "Responsibility" becomes the premium asset.

AI can write 15k lines of code, but it cannot take *Liability* for a single one. It cannot go to jail, it cannot lose its reputation, and it cannot feel the weight of a system failure.

Your job is shifting from "Writer" to "Guardian." Don't compete on volume (Scale). Compete on the ability to take the blame and guarantee the "Why." That is the one thing the algorithm can never optimize away.

Yeah you are right, I am underselling myself in terms of just watering it down to LOC. But I was mostly talking about tangible outcomes that are obvious.

> AI can write 15k lines of code, but it cannot take Liability for a single one.

Thanks for writing this, I needed it.

Glad it resonated.

The addiction to "visible output" (like LOC) is hard to break because it feels like work. But in the AI era, "Judgment" is the new labor.

Think of it like a traditional Japanese Hanko (seal). The value isn't in the paper or the ink (which are cheap/commodities), but in the authority of the stamp that guarantees the content.

Your "tangible result" is no longer the code itself, but the trust that comes from your seal of approval. Keep guarding.

Even if this is true, which I doubt, we're supposed to be comforted by the idea that our role in tomorrow's economic system is to be AI's whipping boy?

We have multiple openings for Senior and Principal Scapegoat Engineers. DM for referral.

You don't have to use AI. Regardless, only humans can take responsibility, not computers, and that will never change.

There is a critical difference between a "Scapegoat" and a "Guarantor."

A scapegoat is sacrificed for someone else's mistake against their will. A guarantor (or in Japanese terms, a Samurai) voluntarily stakes their reputation to validate the system.

Why does a CEO get paid 100x more than an intern? Not because they type 100x faster, but because they are the "designated thermal fuse" that burns out to save the company.

If AI becomes the engine, "being the fuse" (taking the risk) becomes the most expensive service in the economy. It’s not comforting, I agree. But it is profitable.

Although I do understand the analogy being made here. But I suspect OP much like myself is hoping for concrete suggestions. To my mind argument is Software Jobs will shrink and only the very elites will be valuable aka the recent Meta's 10s of millions of offers. But for the rest of average Joes it will be harsh job market or even non existent. So what can the average programmer do , concretely.

A concrete proposal? Become an Auditor, not an Author.

As AI generates billions of lines of code, the world is about to be flooded with "technical debt" and "security holes." The scarcity shifts from writing code to verifying it.

Concrete Action: Shift your skill set towards security auditing, compliance, and system architecture verification. Position yourself as the "Digital Notary" who stamps the AI's work with a human guarantee.

When a bank (like mine) lends money to a software project, we don't ask "Did an AI write this?" We ask "Which human is going to jail if this fails?"

Be the person whose name is on the insurance policy. That is a job an algorithm can never take.

Are there many jobs where failure results in jail time? Pretty dystopian.

There will always be someone whose job is to program computers to do things.

That's us, developers. That will never change. We're the ones dedicated to it.

Execs, managers, HR, salesmen, designers etc won't suddenly want to spend their whole days, not even half of their time, tinkering with a computer so it can do what they want.

Else Basic and Fortran would have made everyone software developers.

Do you feel calmer now? (:

Exactly this. Sora 2.0 came out! It's amazing. I spent an evening with it and got bored. The amazing limitless potential of it blows my mind. But other than a couple of random attempt, thats simply not where my heart lies.

My Claude Code usage is through the roof, however.

This is exactly how I felt when Stable Diffusion came out in 2023. It turns out I am not an artist and eventually got bored by it whereas actual artists used it for hours, the same as we engineers use LLMs. The personality does not change, only the tool.

Yes, there will be always someone who is needed to program stuff. Totally agree with that.

But my question is "how many of those will be needed", because I am not saying that programmers are not needed.

When less numbers are needed, there will be so much competition in finding those jobs, esentially would also mean not able to find the work, as there will be always someone who would be willing to the job at lower wage and come to work with more youthful energy.

Just speaking out loud.

I've had a long career, and seen a number of systemic changes.

I've lived through two software "explosions" where minimal skills lead to large output. The first was web sites and the second was mobile.

Web sites are (even now) pretty easy. In the late 90's though, and early 2000's there was tremendous demand for web site creation. (Every business everywhere suddenly needed a web presence.) This lead to a massive surge in building-web-site training. No time for 3 year degree, barely time for 90 days of "click here, drag that".

So there was this huge percentage of "programmers" that had a very shallow skill set. When the bubble burst it was this group that bore the brunt.

Fast forward to 2007, and mobile apps become a "thing". Same pattern evolves, fast training, shallow understanding, apps do very little (most of the heavy lifting, if it exists at all, is on the backend.) Not a lot of time spent on UI or app flow etc.

This time around the work is also likely to be done offshore. Turns out simple skills can be taught anywhere, tiny programs can be built anywhere.

Worse, management typically didn't understand the importance of foundations like good database design, coherent code, forward thinking, maintainence etc. Programs are 10% creation, 90% maintainence (adding stuff, fixing stuff etc.) From a management point of view (and indeed from those swathes of shallow practioners) the only goal is "it works."

AI is this new (but really old) idea that shallowness is sufficient. And just like before it first replaces people who themselves have only shallow skills; who see "coding" as the goal of their job.

We are far from the end of this cycle, and who knows where it will go, but yes, those with shallow skills are likely to be first on the chopping block.

Those with better foundations (a better understanding of good and bad, perhaps with a deeper education, or deeper experience) and the ability to communicate that value to management are positioned well.

In other words, yes the demand for "lite" developers will implode. But at the same time demand for quality devs, who can tell good from bad (design, code, ui etc) goes up.

If you are a young graduate, you're going to be light on experience. If you're and older person, but had very shallow (or no) training you're easily replaced. If you think development is code, you're not gonna do well.

In truth development is not about code (and never has been). It's about all the processes that lead up to the code. Where possible (even at college level) try and focus on upskilling on "big picture" - understanding the needs of a business, the needs of the customer, the architecture and design that results in "good" or "bad".

AI is a tool. It's important to understand when it's doing good, but also when it's doing bad.

> AI is this new (but really old) idea that shallowness is sufficient.

That’s not the whole story and certainly not the core concern, which is more about developers who already have deep experience, using AI to multiply their output.

Spot on. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

You've seen the "Dot-com" and "Mobile" cycles. This "AI cycle" feels faster, but the trap is the same: Mistaking Access for Mastery.

In Japanese martial arts, we have "Shuhari" (Obey, Digress, Separate). AI gives everyone a shortcut to the final stage ("Look, I made an app!"), skipping the painful "Obey" stage where you learn why things break.

As you said, when the bubble bursts, only those who understand the "Foundation" (database design, consistency) will remain standing. The tools change, but the physics of complexity do not.

Look up induced demand. As it gets easier, more software gets created, not less.

"Else Basic and Fortran would have made everyone software developers."

I think you mean COBOL instead of Fortran? COBOL is a beautiful language, one of the most human readable ones we've ever had.

I agree with this guy: https://obie.medium.com/what-happens-when-the-coding-becomes... When you look at the AI as having a Jr. Developer at your disposal to do the mundane things you actually elevate yourself higher than you could individually (without the help) as you focus more on architecture and design and guide the LLM to make incremental improvements instead of decremental ones. That's my take at least.

This one also: https://terriblesoftware.org/2025/12/11/ai-can-write-your-co...

I agree with the takes, but my only question would be.

If everyone is doing high level stuff like architecture and design, how many of "those people" will be really needed in the long term? My intuition is telling me the size of market needing number of engineers will shrink.

Of course it will shrink! Every industry ever has shrunk as tooling got better.

That said, we are a long way from "peak software". There is a lot of scope for new things, so there's room for a lot of high-level people.

And of course the vast majority of current juniors won't step up at all. Just like the web site devs of the early '00s went off to be estate agents or car salesmen or whatever. Those with shallow training are easily replaced.

The wheel will turn though, and those with a quality, deep, education focused on fundamentals (not job-training-in-xxx-language) are best placed to rise up.

Could you elaborate more? What would those said foundations and fundamentals be ?

In a nutshell, a lot more understanding of how computers work, and how that affects software design.

From theory like Order(n), 3rd Normal Form, P versus NP, Recursion, Logic (including bit logic) etc, to practical things like exploration of language (why languages are different, why that doesn't matter), how Operating Systems actually work (and what they do), how Networks work (their strengths and weaknesses and thus impact on software design) and so on.

Obviously I can't list a 4 year syllabus[1] here, and it would be different for each college. IME colleges don't teach programming past the first couple weeks, although it is the basis for assignments and evaluation for the next 4 years. (In the way that grade school doesn't teach writing after year 1, but you write a lot in the next 10 years.)

[1] All of this can be self taught. There's plenty of text books and materials online. But basically self-taught people learn programming, not theory, and lack the "path" of a formal syllabus.

Each school will of course have a different syllabus, and some will offer selective modules as well focusing on specific areas like graphics, compilers, databases etc.

Thank you for taking the time. This is quite standard CS degree syllabus, while quality and rigour of CS schools differ but I think any decent CS grad should know these.

That is the billion-dollar question.

My take: The market for "Coders" will shrink, but the market for "Problem Solvers who use Logic" will explode.

Think of "Scribes" (people who wrote letters for others) in the past. When literacy became universal, the job of "Scribe" vanished. But the amount of writing in the world increased billion-fold.

Engineering is becoming the new literacy. We won't be "Engineers" anymore; we will just be "People who build things." The title disappears, but the capability becomes universal.

I'm sure we'll all get replaced in a few years. But we won't be alone, the entire society is going to be upended. So we will be part of a vast social and economic experiment in which nobody (1) will be in a position much different from ours. Hopefully, solutions will be found to avoid complete social breakdown.

So I feel like I'm on the Titanic- the ship is sinking and we're going all to hit the water eventually, the trick is to try to keep dry as long as possible. If you've been in an organisation for long, and you know the business, the people, the organisation, have domain knowledge and can contribute beyond translating to code someone else's requirements... These are all valuable assets that will keep you relevant and useful for some time.

[1] except government employees in Europe. Those will never be made redundant, whatever happens.

I feel your anxiety, but let me offer a different metaphor.

Instead of the Titanic (a single point of failure sinking), consider the Ise Grand Shrine in Japan. Every 20 years, they completely rebuild the temple (Shikinen Sengu).

Why? To transfer the skill of building, not just preserve the building itself.

We are entering a "Grand Rebuilding" phase. Yes, the old structures (traditional coding jobs) are being dismantled. But the purpose is to transfer the essence of "Logic" and "Value Creation" to a new material (AI).

Don't cling to the old wood. Focus on being the carpenter who knows how to build the new shrine.

I think grit and hard work will still be valuable attributes, even if AI starts producing perfect software tomorrow.

The world also just doesn't change that quickly.

Even with the most rosy projections, there is no way that software engineers are unnecessary in 2-3 years. Go have a look at METR's projections, even rosy projections aren't getting us to software that can replace engineers in a few years, let alone having that change ripple through the economy.

And nobody actually knows how far AI progress will go on the current trajectory. Moore's law was a steady march for a long time, until it wasn't.

If your only value proposition is “I write good code and pull well defined stories from Jira”, your career was in danger a decade ago as an enterprise dev. The commodization between its not hard to be a good enough developer and outsourcing and plateauing of comp was happening then.

Yes I am aware of BigTech comp - I’m talking about boring old companies like banks, airlines, etc where most developers work.

AI is just making the problem worse for the “ticket takers”. No matter what your title is if you are pulling tickets off the board - that’s mid level behavior.

On the BigTech and adjacent side which is a completely different industry with separate rules to enter and different comp, being able to do leetCode to get a job isn’t enough as of 2022.

What I so far have noticed, is that when people that are not software developers innovate prototypes using vibe coding, it will result in more projects that will require someone understanding how to continue developing and maintaining it.

It will be about the projects architecture and it's alignment with the will of the users. Since AI is not able to do that yet, and probably won't be there in a long time. We as programmers has to contribute with that part. It's our intuitive system thinking, and user understanding that have taken years or decades to form.

Because of this, my prediction is that in the short term, there will be an increase in the need of programming / system thinking skills

I'm pretty confident that if Ai gets good enough to actually take our jobs, it's going to be good enough to take at least 80% of all knowledge work jobs, if not 100%.

In which case everybody is in the same boat and we'll all be in it together.

I don't really believe software dev is uniquely at risk to AI.

No one really knows. But a few things I think about myself.

1). There are many many people there couldn't probably already write more lines of code than me and work for much much cheaper (in India or wherever). Same is true for you (probably). Yet you still have a job.

2). I have a friend that works as a Software and System Engineer for a complicated product that interfaces with the real world. He has to use Natural Language to create requirements that gets turns into code by natural agents down in the "Supply Chain". There are also integration engineers that work with the naturally intelligent agents that create the prompts/requirements to make sure things don't fail (then triage and root cause when they do)

3. Why not diversify your skills beyond code but also hardware, systems, soft skills, business etc etc.

No one knows the future sadly.

There’s no consensus on whether AI-assisted coding is a revolution or smoke and mirrors. However, if it turns out to be truly revolutionary, do you think there’s anyone better than you to do the prompting? Could your boss do the work you do now? Or the CEO of your company? You seem to be positioned better than most.

>Probably checking in about 10 to 15k lines of code per month on average.

God, these claims are so ridiculous. You guys are probably doing it wrong if you write that much code.

It's so easy to measure too. 15k is 750 lines per working day.

There's no way any developer can meaningfully test, read and review 750 lines worth of changes per day.

And with AI code you've got to really go through it with a fine tooth comb, you can't scan the code. There's loads of subtle, but bad, bugs and assumptions it makes without telling you. I really want to emphasise the assumptions bit. A good example I saw recently was it assuming the sort order of a DB call should be something totally wrong, but easy to miss unless you read every line meticulously.

So either the OP is lying about how many lines their AI is pumping out, or they're checking complete AI slop untested and unreviewed into the codebase.

It's a minor point of your post, but this is obligatory reading about judging productivity by lines of code:

https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html

Good paper from 2015: "Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation": https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/W...

tl;dr: Technology eliminates tasks not jobs, ie. automating routine work while making the remaining human parts more valuable: judgement, problem-solving, knowing what to build and why, communicating with a bunch of stakeholders.

This judgement and communication layer has been stubbornly hard to automate across every previous wave of tech and so it will be with this one.

Even if AI is capable of good judgement in a problem space, are the users of the AI able to ask the right questions to get it to express that judgement? (speaking from experience: no).

Banging out syntactically correct code loses value but communication and end-to-end ownership gains value; translating vague C-suite wishlists into working systems, knowing when _not_ to automate or use AI, navigating organizational constraints, understanding the domain you are working in, the organization you are working in, and directing technology in their service.

As long as there are capital owners they will have a need to exchange that capital for skilled, professional judgement in high value tasks, just the nature of what tasks are considered high value will adapt over time, as it always has.

I for one am afraid and this keeps me awake at night, the general take on HNers always seems to be oh you are only doing mundane tasks, AI can't do what I do. Which is partly true, but claude code has improved leaps and bounds almost exponentially at least from my subjective usage. My solution is to just save and invest aggressively and grind DSA to get a higher paying job as I don't see myself in the elites that these discussions are full of. I really am a mediocre prgrammer

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