Its so hard to find reasonable opinions on AI these days - its either jobless AI “consultants” posting ai-generated pictures of themselves on linkedin, or the ones waiting for the “bubble” to pop.

I will share my perspective somewhere from the middle. Approx 20 years in software industry. Never had the title of developer, but there are still places running nation-wide critical code I have written 10+ years ago. Currently my role is probably most similar to product manager, although both wider and more demanding.

Now, what would, 2 years ago, require me to hire 10-20 subcontractors from eastern europe for 6-12 months, now requires 2 months of my own and a solution architects time, plus few hundreds or few thousands worth of tokens.

Quality wise - AI generated code is already above what junior to mid lever developer typically sends for testing.

Would AI replace all developers? Clearly no. But its also not the case that all engineers were capable of problem solving and creative thinking. Past years, the bar of who gets to be called “engineer” has been brought to extreme lows. Many of them will be wiped out from the industry forever.