Programming

Unionize NOW

I don't think this is an AI issue. It made things slightly worse (and probably a lot worse for junior devs) but work in IT/development always sucked and led to burnout. If you read about prehistory of the industry (The Soul of a New Machine for example) few people worked as engineers for more than a decade. They would work extremely hard on couple of projects, burn out and move on to managerial positions, become architects or something. Then more and more people started to aim for Principal type jobs thinking that they will do programming forever. Well, the fact is that programming as a job mostly sucks. It's possible to find great team and interesting project but it never lasts. You usually can't make any decisions and are just doing what you're told, even if you know it's stupid. There's always some boring maintenance work that no one likes. There's support which robs you of your free time...

In my experience, fun projects last a year or two and then management changes, team members change, projects end and suddenly you find yourself in a completely different environment. It's tiring and yes, people do burn out all the time. And yes, we keep doing it because coding is a fairly good work and we like it. With or without AI.

If you ask an LLM for Pong, it will give you Pong, or rather a Pong, a simulacrum average of all the Pongs in its training corpus. But it won't be your Pong. You will not have decided the color, shape, and size of the paddles, or the background color, or speed of the ball, or the language it's written in, or the way to architect the code, or any of the other aspects, so many that they can't be enumerated. It's not possible to describe exactly what you want to the LLM because that would be the code itself. Anything short of that and you will have omitted something, forcing the LLM to make a choice all on its own. Write your own damned Pong.

There has always been a lot of contention between developers and management, they seem to fight with each other for position and leverage like a wrestling match.

Its usually IT / Dev management and business management, and the devs get a lot of collateral damage.

But AI has introduced something new to this struggle, its removed the fun of coding and the accomplishment of craft. Now both sides feels like they can use AI to replace the other, where managers are taking up coding and coders are becoming their own companies. And while that adds more grist for the mill, the customers are thinking they'll replace both and just code and manage their own applications.

That is a lot of uncertainty, and the promise of being able to make a killer app is democratized but that means the ability to make lots of money at it is much more improbable.

Uncertainty and how the game has changed from sporting contest to win or lose high stakes, just makes this not fun anymore.

I don’t know what we can do, except understand and accept that this is happening. It’s a horrible thought, but you can’t deal with change if you stay in denial. I think it might be time – if you’re working in software – to think about a possible future outside the tech industry proper.

So the author’s points are:

• this is bad
• I have no ideas
• quit?

I wish it was that simple to just quit the industry. But it's impossible to find another job that doesn't make me homeless at this time.

It all sucks.

So keep grinding against the burn out hoping to not get fired is the way.

I'm okay.

As long as AI doesn't replace me.

llms should get rid of managers. devs have the knowledge. llms give them more resources. i see a future where they all do it for themselves. we dont need big companies.

Does that actually fit your experience?

There is no denying that AI is transforming the field of software engineering. Some engineers worry that AI might take away their jobs. Frankly, that fear is entirely understandable. However, I do not believe that resisting change or assuming the profession itself will vanish is the right approach.

Don’t see AI only as a threat. Look at the bigger picture. Technology has always changed how we work, and every major change has created new opportunities. Keep learning. Keep growing. Stay curious. Strengthen your ability to think, solve problems, and create.

The industry may look very different a few years from now. Some roles may disappear, and some skills may become less valuable. But that doesn’t mean opportunities are disappearing.

Change your mindset. Keep moving forward. You will find opportunities far greater than what you can see today.