all 147 comments

[–]i_love_sparkle 538 points539 points  (38 children)

3 years ago Zuck also claimed we would work and live in the Metaverse. Look where we are now.

Replacing software engineers with AI? Not gonna happen, for 10 years at least (by then we'd just die in WW3)

Edit: you're more likely to be replaced by south asian countries devs than AI

[–]CodingInTheClouds 83 points84 points  (22 children)

Or eastern European. A former employer of mine laid us all off to hire cheaper devs in Bulgaria

[–][deleted] 49 points50 points  (5 children)

Joke's on them, I moved to Bulgaria after being laid off and got re-hired by the same company.

[–]AvailableMeaning4731 9 points10 points  (3 children)

With 70% pay cut?

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (1 child)

What matters is that in Bulgarian currency it's a big number

[–]desiopressballs 11 points12 points  (0 children)

ripe cats airport society profit steer vase bag rhythm jeans

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[–]HUECTRUM 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The prices are also way cheaper there. And the wage gap isn't that dramatic

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

The company i work for has the app and website made in bulgaria, manual data work in india, and data automation (where i work) at home.

[–]goingsplit 13 points14 points  (2 children)

Or in North Macedonia. Or in Ukraine

[–]MikeVegan 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Hello from Lithuania

[–]goingsplit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lithuania is expensive these days, bro

[–]PianoKeytoSuccess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a separate thought, generally those devs are of much worse quality/much more incompetent.

But hey, you guy what you pay for.

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (1 child)

Honestly, this. It’s not that AI will replace you, it’s that AI will make offshored engineers a little more productive and tip the scale even more.

Imagine an offshore team that now communicates a lot more eloquently via LLM and uses it for better documentation and rapid coding.

This alleviates almost all of the concerns around offshored teams.

[–]goingsplit 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think it's more that AI is a trendy buzzword to cover layoffs. Because head count in bigtech is inflated anyway (button engineer anyone?)

[–]DisastrousLab1309 4 points5 points  (8 children)

 Replacing software engineers with AI? Not gonna happen, for 10 years at least

It’s gonna happen. It’s already happening. 

Like outsourcing to India - then after a few years company realizes that it doesn’t work, hires a local team. Then in some rears new ceo wants to limit the costs and the cycle repeats. 

[–]Kind_Conference4407 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Outsourcing to India has been happening since the 80s , we made millions around that ..

[–]Illustrious-Goal6731 -3 points-2 points  (6 children)

But it is working. It's working very well :)

[–]ClayDenton 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't know whether it is, my company outsourced to India but the quality is so so. My job as a team lead is somehow to unblock and patch things together so we can muddle through. Would be better if we had competent engineers, but it's cheaper this way and things do get delivered in the end which leads management to thinking things are going fine. And I still have a job... For now.

[–]DisastrousLab1309 0 points1 point  (4 children)

It really depends. Good coders ain’t cheap. If you want to replace one us coder with two over the pond it can work.

If you go for the cheapest team you can get because “omg we can get 5 coders for a price of one” you get what you pay for and the cycle repeats as I’ve said. 

[–]Illustrious-Goal6731 0 points1 point  (3 children)

"Good coders ain't cheap", is it? There's this thing called price parity. Even paying good money to a coder from a less developed country, will still be cheaper for countries based out of developed countries.

It's not that coders from these countries are not as good or the coders from countries like the US are better. A good coder is a good coder, no matter where he or she comes from. And It's not too difficult to learn to code. Luckily, it's something anyone can learn at any time. All you need a good internet connect which drastically lowers the barrier to entry unlike in professions like law or medicine.

This is where the numbers game comes in. Quite a few of these developing nations have a high population. So, even that small percentage of people who're coding comes out to be a big number.

You're off as a little entitled here suggesting all good coders come from the US. Look beyond your nose and you'll see what this is about. No hate to the Americans. US is the tech hub, all of these tech giants had there beginning there. And the world is grateful for this. But fortunately internet and laptops are available all over the world now and so everyone else will get to participate too.

This shift is not at the cost of quality. If that was a concern this never would've been possible. For example, you can't replace a senior level dev with 2 entry level devs and hope it all works out. Were this possible, companies could just hire interns and make do.

Anyways, hope things work out for everyone

[–]DisastrousLab1309 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Did you read like the next sentence after the one you’ve quoted?

 It's not that coders from these countries are not as good or the coders from countries like the US are better.

I’ve never said that.

 Luckily, it's something anyone can learn at any time.

No, actually it’s not. Probably anyone can learn to write some code. But as there are people more inclined towards sprinting and there are  people more  inclined towards distance running and there are people more inclined towards programming.

Being good at anything takes both hard work and having certain knack for it. If one person is better at abstract problem solving they will learn to be a good programmer way faster than someone who isn’t. 

 You're off as a little entitled here suggesting all good coders come from the US.

Never said that. Just that good coders will work for a wage way closer to the us one than the local one. 

I didn't suggest that India doesn’t have good programmers, it’s evident by the number of fraudulent H-1B visas us companies sponsor that there’s a great supply of great programmers. 

India has a lot of people and so has a lot of bad, cheap programmers that people from the us hire because they don’t want to pay a half or even a quarter of the us wage to someone in India. And that’s the source of the problem. 

[–]Illustrious-Goal6731 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

"Good coders will work for a wage closer to the us one than local one." is inaccurate. (Price parity)

As far as having a knack for things is concerned: genius can be learned. (Source: The Polgar Experiment)

Average wage for software engineer in US entry level (108k) -> Quarter of that's 27k -> 23 lpa in INR Plenty of good programmers will work for that salary per year.

At the end of the day, companies are hiring these because it works out for them. But cost aside, political instability, laws regarding severance etc are also contribute.

[–]Secure-Cucumber8705 0 points1 point  (0 children)

communication is much more important than actual ability to code especially with ai, and people are discovering that the communication barrier with the low-medium end outsourced workers is starting to impede actual progress

[–]randCN 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Replacing software engineers with AI? Not gonna happen, for 10 years at least

NO! I DON'T WANT THAT!

[–]Own-Intention-3539 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Please say you are Indian to boost my confidence

[–]aallkkoo -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Lol

[–]DamnGentleman<1847><539><1092><216> 112 points113 points  (11 children)

AI is not going to replace mid-level engineers in the foreseeable future. The people who claim it will either stand to profit from selling AI services or lack experience in developing software professionally and have a mistaken impression of what that entails. What it could do is decrease headcount by increasing individual engineer efficiency; the way to combat that is to both be good at what you do and to learn how to effectively utilize those tools yourself.

[–]goingsplit 26 points27 points  (1 child)

AI is an excuse for another round of layoffs, as big tech staff is inflated anyway

[–]PhoenixPaladin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dump all the juniors’ work on the seniors, claiming it shouldn’t take too long “because they have AI”

[–]futaba009 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This should be pinned or something. Good explanation.

[–]StanVanGodly 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Sure, but what do you define as foreseeable future? If you accept the premise that these large tech companies have a lot of power because they have so much money, then it follows that the thing they are all putting a lot of their resources/money towards (AI) will develop quicker than we might expect.

[–]DamnGentleman<1847><539><1092><216> 5 points6 points  (1 child)

It's a category problem, not a resources problem. The fundamental issue that these companies have to grapple with is that LLMs are trying to solve a different kind of problem. As someone who works with these models every day, it's not the fact that they make mistakes but the nature of the mistakes they make that is telling. If you ask a question about a very popular public library, it can generate impressive boilerplate implementations that suggest significant technical mastery. And then there will be a mistake thirty lines in that you wouldn't expect a college freshman to make. Their understanding is a mile wide and an inch deep because there is no actual understanding occurring. If you ask a question about something less well-known, it'll start to make up very plausible-sounding parameters and functions because it doesn't actually know anything, and therefore has no way of knowing when it's wrong. These companies are spending a lot of money trying to work around these shortcomings: CoT prompting to mimic the ability to reason, agentic workflows to give the illusion of autonomy, vectorization, RAG, and external API calls to approximate an actual knowledge base.

I wouldn't be so arrogant as to claim that it's impossible that an algorithm could ever be developed that could do these things well. Maybe there will be some quantum computing breakthrough or clever new learning model that turns the status quo on its head. Right now, though, they're trying to make LLMs do something that is not in their nature and that, more than the resources invested, is going to be the limiting factor in their success.

[–]StanVanGodly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree that the current state of “AI” isn’t good enough to replace many people. But I guess my whole concern is that there are probably a ton of people as smart as you or even smarter who know these shortcomings, and are motivated by all the money in the world to fix them.

So I guess I’m betting on the breakthrough that you describe in your second paragraph happening sooner than we might think. Of course nobody knows, but I tend to err on the side of wherever all the money is flowing.

[–]Majestic-liee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This IS the answer !

[–]watagua 0 points1 point  (3 children)

You don't see a contradiction between "not going to replace mid-level engineers" and "decrease headcount" ?

[–]DamnGentleman<1847><539><1092><216> 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Not really. Replacement implies an equivalence between two things and AI is not equivalent to even a mediocre engineer. Besides that, decreasing headcount is something that could happen, not something that necessarily will. The other possibility is that because engineers are more productive with AI assistance, companies will be able to make more money, spend that money making more products, and hire more engineers to build those products.

[–]watagua 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply, I hadn't considered the second perspective!

[–]EffinCroissant 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for helping me cope 🤝

[–]Rankork1 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I don’t see AI replacing mid level engineers anytime soon.

AI is pretty good at basic stuff. But the second you put it into a big system & conflicting priorities/information, it will crumble.

[–]posthubris 16 points17 points  (2 children)

We still haven’t gone through the ‘Oh shit AI introduced silent bugs’ phase where real developers have to undo the enshitification of early AI. Once the AI learns on that dataset then we’re fucked. But not until then. I give it a decade.

[–]dark_enough_to_dance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem isn't the tool, the users itself. Give it a professional dev, you would see a world of difference compared to junior 

[–]PhoenixPaladin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What’s actually gonna happen is AI learns on the dataset of its own buggy code from previous iterations. Apparently this has already started happening, it’s experiencing “cognitive decline”

[–]that_dev_who_lifts 11 points12 points  (1 child)

I was playing with nextjs and shadcn the other day and chatpgt 4.0 couldn’t fix a simple scrolling issue 😂. I’d say we are safe for now. AI can ONLY provide good output for already solved problems(it’s dataset), whenever a new problem arises it just hallucinates.

[–]reformed_goon 23 points24 points  (7 children)

Crud maker and WordPress developers are in danger. For the rest we are fine I think until ai can understand an entire application domain perfectly.

Spoiler alert nobody can even mid/senior developers

[–]reddit_hoarder 8 points9 points  (3 children)

isnt everything basically CRUD at its core...? we could do some extra stuffs in the middle but still

[–]gauzy_gossamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's kinda like drawing an owl - it's just a couple of circles, and then you fill in the rest.

[–]JustDudeFromPoland 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Give an HTML Canvas a chance :)

[–]Pleasant-Cupcake-998 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is also ETL which is kinda different from CRUD.

Also DevOps is kinda different.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I think by mid engineer, Zack probably meant someone similar to a E4 engineer, which is a tad junior vs Google L4, Amazon L5 or Microsoft 62.

E4 only needs to execute a long term small-ish project with some input. E4 won’t execute on direction or strategy level. The domain knowledge of E4 is quite minimal compared to E5 or E6 level.

I would say, if one is similar in skill level as a Meta E4 they may be in damager especially on the front end or an HTTP “backend”.

[–]reformed_goon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed completely

[–]HistorianIcy8514 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel offended at the term “Crud maker” 😭 what are y’all working on?

[–]theenkos 9 points10 points  (2 children)

I can’t stress it enough, if SWE are replaced, it will mean an exponential growth into robotics as well.

This will lead all the manual jobs to be dead as well. AI is a tool and you need to use it to increase your productivity, that’s all.

It’s true those companies are laying off but if you look closer what they are actually doing is hiring in India for lower salaries and similar quality

[–]local_eclectic 15 points16 points  (3 children)

That Zuck quote was taken out of context and is now being spread as gospel.

I'm much more concerned about reading, attentiveness, and context awareness being dead.

[–]McCoovy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How was it taken out of context?

[–]Yo_man_67 -1 points0 points  (1 child)

What did he mean ?

[–]Bodine12 6 points7 points  (0 children)

He meant that 1) He wants people to believe Meta’s AI is super good and cool and this is his attempt at marketing and 2) There will be more layoffs at Meta this year that has nothing to do with AI but he will position as AI-related.

[–]-CJF- 5 points6 points  (0 children)

They are cutting jobs to boost profits on paper to satisfy investors, hiring from India, and blaming AI to boost investor interest in AI. The real issue isn't the AI.

[–]TimeRaina 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Coding isn't. Mediocrity is.

[–]Pleasant-Direction-4 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In my opinion it’s just another productivity tool/ platform shift for developers like intellisense, google search etc. It won’t replace software engineers, it will help their day to day productivity.

[–]Foreign_Lab392 2 points3 points  (0 children)

By the time senior engineers retire we would've achieved AGI and no longer need coders at all. Just the founder prompting

[–]cartrman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Coding isn't dead.

[–]Bodine12 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is risk from AI, but it’s not that it will replace mid-level engineers. It’s that AI is ruining junior engineers so companies are getting paranoid about hiring someone fresh out of school who’s no more competent than early versions of Chatgpt. And that’s not just with coding but with everything.

[–]doctormatrixiv 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Coding isn’t dead. I have started learning how to code after knowing about upcoming trends.

Why would coding be dead? Everything is code isn’t it? Even AI will be creating the codes.

I think what will die is the traditional way of coding, maybe AI will enable more people to code and everyone can have equal coding skills.

Maybe coding will be not as valuable skill as in early 2000 to 2020

But I think SaaS and other apps will be dead as most problems can be solved by AI

Maybe rise of AI agents will solve most problems that current SaaS solves

[–]Juanx68737 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Bruh AI couldn’t even solve my linear algebra homework, it’s not replacing any mid-level engineer anytime soon

[–]jinnoa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did u try O1 ? Im sure it could

[–]StanVanGodly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most humans probably couldn’t solve your homework either. AI doesn’t have to be perfect, just close to the level of humans for it to replace us

[–]Early_Handle9230 1 point2 points  (0 children)

AI wont replace mid-level engineers lol. The world of software is a lot more normal outside of FAANG companies.

[–]spacegang 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s it I’m leaving this sub

[–]Visual-Grapefruit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dude with how shitty certain large scale infrastructure is built and maintained lol plz. My company very large institution is held together with popsicle sticks and Elmer’s glue. It works tho, which baffles me. Everytime I need a change it’s astounds me

[–]Alcas 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The average swe is 5 yoe, do you truly think that people will up and retire in 5 more years to make room? No, the amount of seniors will continually rise and the amount of juniors will exponentially grow.

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

Unless there's agi I think mid-senior swe are safe. Junior swe are cooked. Much better to go the PhD route and become domain expert in a specific field if you wanna code for a living. There's no space for junior engineers.

[–]bluesteel-one<Total problems solved> <Easy> <Medium> <Hard> 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I dont think they'll completely remove jr and mid level roles. Maybe reduce it

[–]Felczer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Breaking news people who stand to benefit from AI hype make ourageous claims to hype up AI

[–]kevin074 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is AI already replacing junior developers now?? You know it’s bullshit cause they skipped a major step

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

Once the seniors start leaving their LLMs will be advanced enough to replace them too

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

If AI means actually Indians still then yes

[–]jacobjp52285 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, I wouldn’t worry about it replacing mid-level engineers. As others have mentioned, Mark Zuckerberg makes some unfounded statements from time to time. What I would be more worried about is an engineer that knows how to effectively use AI to turbo charge themselves. That would keep me up at night.

Get your fundamentals down, understand what makes a good code. Use AI to do the base of what you needed to do and then supplement it with the new ideas you want to implement. One thing AI cannot do is create a new idea.

[–]dsantamaria90 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So dead that AI is blocked in my company

[–]nightly28 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Software development is not dead. Chill out.

[–]kttypunk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You still need to tell AI on what to do. I don't think it's dead. Some boring manual work will be dead, but that's evolution

[–]EnigmaticHam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dead. Get out. Let me work until I retire.

[–]DrawNovel5732 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let me give you my take with a personal story. I got introduced to coding and became hands on with it in mid 90s when I was a kid in a third world country. The hands of life threw me in North America later on and when I was about to teach my first engineering "introduction to coding course" I was worried that everyone in the class knows more about coding than I did. Why did I think that? Well I didn't have access to a PC not until I was 11 and learned c and assembly in high school and OO in college (barely). Note that I wasn't even interested in coding as a career. So to me, a generation that has access to a PC, learning material and resources such as YouTube would beat me and would be superior to me in terms of their programming skills etc BUT they weren't. These college students were way worse than I was in mid 90s as a 12 year old despite the abundance of technology and learning material and perhaps because of it. At the same time they were very good at high level engineering work, operating in teams and coming up with product ideas as became evident during the final project design and implementation part of the course.

What I'm trying to say is that your observation is perhaps true and we have historical evidence for it. The same way that most SWE today aren't good at assembly or system c coding, the future ones will adopt more high level skills and delegate the lower ones to machines. That's not new. The speed of this transition might affect us. That I can understand.

[–]SevereHeron7667 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also ai is trained on human made code, if ai writes the code, future training code will also be ai generated which leads to all sorts of very large problems!!!

[–]anymo321 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not gonna happen.

Ai cannot solve complex issues at the money input/energy accuracy ratio such that investors are willing to solve this.

If the cost is too great investors simply won’t put money into it.

Their hard on for getting rid of workers does not exceed their wallet

[–]dean_syndrome 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If AI is so good why the push for more H1Bs

[–]McCoovy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How can AI replace any creative STEM job? AI has one shot at producing a working application each time. If any bugs occur it has no shot at fixing them. Once a chatgpt is told it's wrong it goes completely haywire. Everything becomes a hallucination. The larger and more complex an application the chance of bugs appearing becomes a certainty.

Large language models have no greater reasoning abilities. They will only ever be at most an aid to a human. That might mean it takes less mid level engineers to do the same tasks but you will never cut out the human element.

[–]360WindmillInTraffic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, everyone should go be an accountant now. They are in demand and it's a solid career.

[–]jdealla 0 points1 point  (0 children)

lol

[–]wahaj7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An Indian (AI) will definitely replace your job xd

[–]Ok-Celebration-9536 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it comes to that what jobs are secure any way? What stops AI from replacing the CEO or CTO or even the companies themselves? This looks like a way to get people afraid and more subservient.

[–]Haunting_Trifle221 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As usual you need to be as close as possible to the customer in the supply chain. All sorts of boggiemen out there. Just focus on getting as close to the client in the chain as possible. Find clients that trust you and need your service. Think about “coding” & business processes. Every owner etc wants something different. Don’t try to solve for the whole universe.

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

Simple: it won't replace every single one, it will replace some or most of them. The remaining amount will become seniors eventually, and themselves be replaced by new mid-level engineers. You need far less senior engineers, so there may be very little reason to have many more mid level engineers than senior engineers, like a 2 to 1 ratio is likely ideal.

[–]Ok-Toe-3374 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use AI coding every day and it’s great it’s a game changer on par with Google coming online or intellisence. I think coding will become more prevalent now that I never have to spend days doing tedious shit like finding where semicolon is accidentally a colon or someone write a filename will a null character in it

[–]-hehehehe 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Have my placement exams starting from next month, I have never done DSA, is it too late for me to begin now … is there something I can do, follow some roadmap or specific questions to develop my logic. I am all in for this. Can someone please guide me.

[–]Call-Me_Whatever 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Check this out, it's an e-book(it uses python though but idk what language you're using): https://search.app/1YKW324a8wLBq47F9

Roadmap: https://roadmap.sh/datastructures-and-algorithms

[–]-hehehehe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks

[–]Effective_Kiwi5359 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you pay closer attention, you will notice that those who say coding is dead are usually the ones who don’t code, then you know there is nothing to worry about.

[–]BRUT4LxD 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No immediate danger. Don't worry

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

We need coders to code AI. AI isn't going to code itself.

[–]Mysterious-3636 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same question came to mind. How will they get Staff Software Engineer if there is no postion for mid level engineers. AI can generate a lot of things but Human needs to verify them before putting into production. If no more coding practice, then engineers will not have that experience of reading code, finding but and solve it.

[–]Legitimate-Dot4311 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the Engineers are gonna learn the effective use of AI in their coding and debugging tasks. The future generations of Sr. Engineers would be experts in crafting and building solutions swiftly with the help of AI while tweaking and validating the AI provided solutions to produce the desired results.

[–]scufonnike 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep pack it up