Ask HN: What career will you switch to when AI replaces developers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What career will you switch to when AI replaces developers?

3 pointsDGAP8 comments

Last time I asked this, 8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43916814

I don't think that genAI will replace developers. I do think it's possible that it will change what being a developer means, though. The real question, I think, is "if this change happens, is it something you could be OK with?"

My personal answer to that is "no", but I'm close enough to retirement that I don't have to consider changing careers to avoid it. I'll be gone if/when it becomes a real issue. However, if I were closer to the front end of my career, I'd certainly be looking to change, perhaps to technical writing.

> However, if I were closer to the front end of my career, I'd certainly be looking to change, perhaps to technical writing.

It's tough for Juniors. I recommend specializing on one or two systems aspects, like performance, reliability, security. Understanding is design, how to measure the aspect, how to reason about it, knowing which levers to pull.

AI is the poison pill for corporations. They cannot resist the idea that with no people to pay they will make even more profit. If you think about that, and understand that AI is about search, then you see that there will be enormous opportunity to build software that is built to help people not make profit.

Even if you don't really like programming, the takeover by Artificiality will mean that the value of Actuality will increase dramatically. So go for actual value in what you do.

AI doesn’t replace developers, it just allows developers to write more code. Now more code per developer, but there is still a lot of software that isn’t written due to a skilled developer shortage, so you’ll probably be fine if you are competent. It does limit growth, and a lot of younger kids are going to have to pick new fields to pursue, but many were just in programming for the money, so maybe they can follow their passion instead?

So if being a developer means not making good money, and not actually writing code, what is the appeal?

Good developers will be more productive with AI so I don’t think they won’t make good money.

Bad developers shouldn’t be in the industry anyways.

Kids won’t flock to the industry just for the money anymore, and that’s how it should be.

Hoping plain old software development will remain for the next decade or so, then retire.

Answer to the qn: I’d start option trading full time :)

But I don’t really think jobs will eventually dry up, because with the advent of ai, the competent developer’s productivity increases exponentially, and teams can stay lean and build unicorn businesses, case for startups

But for corporates at the end of the day, their hiring won’t change ig, most of the layoffs are not directly related to ai at all, is what I feel. They will keep on hiring people for the sake of hiring tbh

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