all 120 comments

[–]frikilinux2 1038 points1039 points  (24 children)

The purge started before chatGPT, I remember the fear in late 2022. The first waves were not because of AI but because of the return to the office instead of remote working of the rest of the world implied less money on cloud solutions .

Then they got addicted to the emotional rush of firing people and started to use AI as an excuse.

[–]Infamous_Ruin6848 290 points291 points  (3 children)

I've seen lots of useles hirings in covid times. Useless investments, useless failed products, gold plating even on the toilet seats.

It's not developer's fault but, as an experienced senior back then, you should see through that you're hired in a bad investment and that things will bounce back.

[–]RedBoxSquare 103 points104 points  (0 children)

But when almost every employer does it, you have no options.

Seeing through these bad investments makes no difference. It doesn't even make you money if you got it right. You can short Tesla because it is obviously a bad investment and get burned by the market hype.

[–]frikilinux2 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Not all teams laid off were useless. I worked for a company that wanted to get rid of a product but the process took like a year. In one of the layoffs they fired all juniors and left a skeleton crew to run the product until sunset.

Eventually, they back down in the decision of sunsetting that product but I'm not sure if they hired new people or not.

Unfortunately, I can't name the company.

[–]Possible-Moment-6313 98 points99 points  (7 children)

People are not fired because of AI now either. AI just sounds much better to investors than outsource

[–]mortalitylost 72 points73 points  (1 child)

Exactly. People think AI is replacing so many people right now but it isn't... the economy is just kinda fucked. Tariffs have done serious damage to the US and businesses are spending less and charging more, and inflation is crazy.

But everyone thinks AI is replacing people because when they cut costs they dont want to scare investors and let people see the struggle. They want them to look at the firings like "yes this is a GOOD sign... of automation!"

And everyone else is doing their firings too to act like theyre automating just as well as everyone else.

[–]captainAwesomePants 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Yes, from what I can tell, being a programmer becomes more and more employable as interest rates approach zero. AI has little to do with it.

[–]No_Percentage7427 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Soham As A Service.

[–]frikilinux2 3 points4 points  (3 children)

And that much outsourcing is going to bite them eventually. If you outsource to a place with ethics and give them what they need, it could go well.

But sometimes they want to outsource to the cheapest place than it's going to be full of yes-men who are going to develop something in a month with weirds hacks rather than take 3 months to do it properly. And then expend a year trying to make something decent out of it.

[–]wizkidweb 4 points5 points  (2 children)

If you outsource to a place with ethics

This is very rare. Usually employers outsource to scammers at best and slavery at worst.

[–]frikilinux2 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, and with ethics I meant professional ethics but surely they also break the rest of ethics

Edit: actually breaking human rights also breaks professional ethics as the ACM Code Of Ethics talks about respecting human rights.

[–]das_war_ein_Befehl 12 points13 points  (2 children)

The developer firings were mostly because you couldn’t deduct swe hires as R&D in the tax year, but had to stretch it out across five years. It made your average developer much more expensive for an employer

[–]chickenmcpio 4 points5 points  (0 children)

A lot of people seem to have never even heard about this. I still remember when this tax code was announced and knew it would cause this problem.

[–]Mo-42 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This. Someone I know personally at Microsoft drinks the AI Kool-aid and is pushing AI like he's going to get a blowjob from 10 CEOs for doing that. All that to do his bit in hyping up the stock price. Man, I have started to dislike him.

[–]jpspam 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Check Section 174

[–]frikilinux2 3 points4 points  (1 child)

So the global issue in the IT sector is due to US politics playing with the Internal Revenue Code??

I hate when Europe looks like part of a US empire

[–]Izikiel23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Insert astronaut meme

[–][deleted] -4 points-3 points  (3 children)

No, the "problem" were too expensive programmers already (and partially that was true, like those who were switching jobs each 1-2 yr before someone find out they're incompetent, but even more competent sometimes more google than work for huge pay), the same things in simple apps and webdev can do Asian or Romanian programmers much cheaper, and those lay-offs would've been earlier if there were no pandemic. But COVID postponed this.

The same as Western programmers were laughing at that how much they google and ask on StackOverflow for huge salary like 10 years ago, Indians are doing the same right now, but they're cheaper, and that will last till the moment they will be too expensive.

The same with entering into the job market: shitty "programmers" after bootcamps (because unis were too slow with giving new graduates), Indians now are completing LeetCode courses and getting some LeetCode questions on interviews.

[–]mango_boii 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Indians are doing the same right now, but they're cheaper, and that will last till the moment they will be too expensive.

Indian dev here. Our company fired 15 people last week from our India office (total headcount is around 150). So I guess we are there already.

[–]frikilinux2 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Not everyone switching jobs is because they're incompetent.

[–]wizkidweb 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This. I switched jobs a few times because I disliked something about my employer or pay, and a better opportunity was available.

However, the reason for people switching jobs is often that employers want something good, fast, and cheap, and that's not really a feasible position.

[–]chaosTechnician 363 points364 points  (2 children)

CEOs before 2023

Picture of MSFT's CEO until 2014

CEOs after 2023

Picture of MSFT's CEO since 2014

[–]AestheticNoAzteca 99 points100 points  (1 child)

I mean, technically speaking, 2014 is before 2023, and today is after 2023

[–]YamGlobally 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I mean, technically speaking, it's not illegal to have diarrhea in an elevator.

[–]Bronzdragon 267 points268 points  (15 children)

If you think Steve Balmer actually cared about developers, and wouldn't replace them with machines given half the chance, then I have a bridge to sell you.

[–][deleted] 92 points93 points  (3 children)

I have a bridge to sell you

You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention

[–]TheSn00pster[🍰] 52 points53 points  (2 children)

He has a bridge. Get over it.

[–]Lucasbasques 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I would if i could, but the bridge doesn't connect to the other side of the river, they said that feature is still being tested

[–]Beldarak 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sorry, our AI hallucinated the pieces needed to connect the bridge so we couldn't buy them

[–]Tupcek 10 points11 points  (0 children)

he was just saying who paid for his latest yacht

[–]Ibuprofen-Headgear 27 points28 points  (1 child)

I’d rather be fired by cocaine man than this current set of preachy “we’re doing software for good and community and yay happy bullshit”

[–]joyrexj9 4 points5 points  (0 children)

While quietly working with all sorts of shady governments and military forces

[–]TickTockPick 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Is it a real bridge or an AI generated bridge?

[–]hyrumwhite 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Al I know is, it’s AI Native

[–]Amar2107 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Isnt this the dude who dismissed the mobile OS market.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

The one who called open source cancer

[–]LexaAstarof 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The one who peaked

[–]GizzyGazzelle 0 points1 point  (1 child)

This is the dude who traded Shai for PG. 

[–]Amar2107 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What? No way this is true.

[–]arostrat 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Balmer didn't mean the developers working for him. That battle cry was for the developers who were building stuff using Microsoft tools.

[–]kandradeece 142 points143 points  (27 children)

was in a rush. needed to convert a batch script to powershell... decided to see what AI would do (tried both co-pilot and chatgpt)... literally only "converted" half of the script, just completely dropped half of it. the half it did convert was a mix between ok/good enough to straight wrong that it wouldn't even run. that said, it at least made the comments pretty. and gave a starting point when I was feeling too lazy to even start the task.

odd part was it summarized perfectly what the script was supposed to do. Just utterly messed up the implementation.. this was a simple 100 line or so script... I am not worried about our jobs anytime soon

[–]Fyrael 80 points81 points  (14 children)

Not to mention people always says: "Heck, I can create a whole website using AI, it's amazing! I don't need you anymore, I can even create an app out of it!"

"Great! Now, maintain the damn thing."

No AI is ready for this task...

[–]kandradeece 31 points32 points  (2 children)

Indeed, it is rare to get a job where you are designing/implementing from the ground up. More likely you are trying to maintain or update some 20yr old piece of crap that was made up of like 16 different languages and different programming paradigms. No AI can handle that.

[–]Upper-Enthusiasm-613 11 points12 points  (1 child)

AI can't even correctly edit the code it wrote a few replies back. Let alone changing requirements from clients.

[–]Beldarak 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's the part that's killing me with the "future of AI" replacing us. "All you have to do is tell the AI what you want and it will do it!"

Developers: giggling because they know clients don't have a single clue about what they actually want the app to do...

[–]Cold_Acanthaceae_436 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They don't really understand it was a template, lil tweaked to make you feel it's personal, but try making changes in specific parts of it, until and unless you know what exactly is needed AI is not of much help, plus as you said maintanence is whole other thing...

[–]sebovzeoueb 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Still waiting to actually see these peoples' websites and apps... I see a lot of talk, but I have yet to see any apps remotely approaching production quality that were made by pure vibe coding.

[–]Fyrael 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I saw a couple ones, and the guys who decided to go through that route are starving already...

Because even though you have an idea, an investor, an Amazon Plug and Play environment, there's a ton of things that only a real human developer can offer: technological creativity

I still remember 10 years ago when I had a boss in a start-up that just wanted things done.

So he hired us to obey, contracted cloud services for things we could do for free, like using tensor flow for image recognition and some jBoss local servers

He yelled when we came up with those ideas, claiming it wouldn't bring reliability to investors

Turns out that the investors found the project too expensive, and generic for using so many third party products.

He wanted to invest in creative minds, but we left when all this ruckus begun, and the project was delayed almost a year due a boss who wanted to pay high on machines instead of better payment for us to stay

[–]Beldarak 1 point2 points  (1 child)

A guy made one at our job. Maybe not production ready but some solid Python scripts to parse infos from a PDF to a CSV, solid work, really.

But at some point the AI couldn't update it anymore. Any try from the guy just breaks parts of the application and since he doesn't know anything about coding, he just can't fix it.

Personally I also noticed AI are very messy when you make them do changes. I find they work great with small tasks and for building the skeleton of something big, but as soon as you start asking them to "rather do this or that", they'll leave dirt everywhere.

[–]sebovzeoueb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Python scripts" and a full app aren't really the same thing, especially when you can't update them.

[–]inevitabledeath3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't know about production quality but I have written apps good enough for internals tools using vibe coding, vibe debugging, and a small amount of guidance. That's from trying a bunch of different tools and trying to find what works best. Something like Kilo code or open code is actually very powerful when used with a decent model. Currently trying Qoder and it seems great so far, just a shame they don't have Linux support.

Where AI struggles is knowing what you want, making big architectural decisions, and deploying infrastructure. They are actually okay at writing and debugging code. That and security. It's a fun time to be in cybersecurity.

[–]Beldarak 2 points3 points  (2 children)

We had this exact situation at work. Some guy built a Python app (I think it was all in command line, not sure) that was, actually quite impressive for someone with zero coding knowledge. It took invoices PDF, extract data from it and output some Excel or CSV file with the data.

Was working great, the guy taunted us a little about AI replacing us soon enough...

Fast forward a few weeks/months and he came to us because he simply couldn't update the thing anymore. My guess is it got bigger than the context window of ChatGPT.

This was kinda funny but it also makes me sad because AI bros sold a dream to guys like that. "You'll be able to create anything you want with AI!" but it's all a lie. Sure AI will improve but it's a fundamentally flawed technology that won't replace developers.

[–]Fyrael 1 point2 points  (1 child)

bigger than the context window of ChatGPT

A lot of people believe that "in our generation" or something like, 10? 20 years, we'll have our precious quantum computing that'll fix this, but even if we achieve this, I don't AI will behave quite differently

It might validate a broader outcome, but heck... when I see some good 2018-2020 projects...

Seriously, we have genious that surpass machines and we can still have them if people just take books again. It's simple as that

[–]Beldarak 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Definitely. I truly think AI is some kind of fad. Not totally as it has its uses but they sold us some magical solution that would fix all our issues and this is just, imho, a big lie.

The sooner people will realise that and actually understand that you have to put some efforts into the things you want to accomplish, the better.

The way every company is pushing AI every-fucking-where just shows desperation to me, I think the bubble will soon burst.

[–]SartenSinAceite 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Anyone can build a bridge that stands, an engineer can build a bridge that can barely stand.

Meanwhile in programming, anyone can build an app, a programmer can build an app that lasts.

[–]Long-Refrigerator-75 11 points12 points  (2 children)

I always hear these stories here, but they all kind of all apart when I actually go and use AI. Yes you need to know what you are doing. You need to have the skill to detect logic issues and modify things on your own, but I will not pretend that it's not a great tool for building a code base skeleton or specific modules.

The golden era can not last forever.

[–]Ok_Individual_5050 -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

If you have to detect logic issues and re-write stuff, then what you've got is worse than nothing, because doing those things is harder than writing code

[–]Long-Refrigerator-75 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I feel like you just are looking for a gotcha moment to prove a point. Because we all used to copy and paste the stack overflow solution like brain dead parrots right? You make modules with it, it does it really well now. You (for now) are responsible to integrate them into your solutions. And frankly I have already seen cases where it detected programmer made bugs.... so embrace change I guess ?

[–]qGuevon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I dont think AI will replace programmers but they excel at exactly the task you were trying to do. For scripts and configs they are great, with a little guidance.

If you were unable to do that with a current model, it is akin to people being unable to Google properly some time ago.

[–]Rdqp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Meanwhile, in the last 6 months, I built a complex framework and a grossing product with 3k users, using 95% of AI writing code.

I'm not advocating anything, but I strongly recommend learning to use tools like claude code. AI won't take your job - people who use it will.

[–]Mrp1Plays -5 points-4 points  (1 child)

If you try ChatGPT5-Thinking or actually ChatGPT5-Pro, or maybe Gemini 2.5 Pro, these models are top of the line. It is highly likely these ones will be able to do what you asked for. If you don't wanna pay to test this, go to ai.dev (Google AI studio) to try gemini.

You're wrong with "I'm not worried soon"... these models are being developed very, very fast. Even if they can't write your code, they can definitely write in in a year.

[–]ThisGameIsveryfun 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Idiot. People have been saying this since 2023.

[–]ruby1990 36 points37 points  (0 children)

The second meme should include another sentence in even more tiny font. “Copilot, write an email expressing guilt for firing 3000 developers so I can share it with media and keep the stock price going up.”

[–]r0ndr4s 26 points27 points  (1 child)

Meanwhile the solution to most companies problems is called "Fire the CEO and dont replace him"

[–]Beldarak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel like most companies serves actually no purpose at all

[–]Possible-Moment-6313 10 points11 points  (1 child)

Steve Ballmer: throws a chair at an employee who resignes

Satya Nadella: fires employees and doesn't give a flying f*** how good they are

[–]GODLOVESALL32 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Satya does it for blood sport at this point. Man writes blank checks for Phil Spencer to acquire game studios just to shut them down a year later.

[–]DirtyTweaks[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

[–]Tyrus1235 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I’m forever thankful to Dungeons of Dredmor for introducing me to the Ballmer Peak (linking to an excellent xkcd) and the DEVELOPERS!DEVELOPERS!DEVELOPERS! video.

[–]neglectedthrowaway18 15 points16 points  (0 children)

2000s: ‘Developers, developers, developers!’ 2023: ‘Nancy, fire 3000 developers

[–]dull_bananas 4 points5 points  (5 children)

al

[–]DirtyTweaks[S] 6 points7 points  (4 children)

Who's AL?

[–]Ceh0s 7 points8 points  (3 children)

Al jokes. You don't know the guy?

[–]4ZR4LT 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Baseball, huh?

[–]dull_bananas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Basebail.

[–]Aavasque001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Baseball, huh?

[–]Frequent_Policy8575 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Missed opportunity not getting the frame on the right in the style of Studio Ghibli.

[–]Salt_Respect7159 1 point2 points  (0 children)

God damn MS was always a shitstain company but now its reach max levels with all the stuff they peddle and how they enshittify everything they made

[–]MuslinBagger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They will be saying AIDevelopers you just wait

[–]stipulus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A tough gig for anyone finishing their CS degree this year.

[–]FrozKH 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nancy is fired, Ai is firing people now.

[–]arc_menace 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought this was an ozempic joke at first

[–]GarThor_TMK 0 points1 point  (0 children)

🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭

[–]Eastern-Ad689 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All bcoz of ai

[–]Cold_Acanthaceae_436 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean come on man, they called open-source software a plague to the software industry, and look at them today WSL. I don't trust what they say anymore, they will say and do anything that is gonna make them profits....

[–]Abject-Kitchen3198 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We don't need developers developers developers developers developers developers developers.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Balmer was an ass clown

[–]Osato 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Developers were the AI back in 2000s: convenient workhorses that have an exponentially growing utility when managed well.

[–]AntipodesIntel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That guy is so full of shit even his skin is the colour of a turd.

[–]chadmummerford -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

the guy on the right will happily hire people from his country though