AI is Reshaping Developer Careers - Here's What I'm Hearing

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Hey folks, I figured we'd do a bit of an AI talk today. Not specifically on like Claude and Copilot and the AI models and stuff, just more I guess like general. Um, and I wanted to talk a little bit about how like when I've been talking with individuals about sort of careers, AI, how that's affecting things. Um, and just kind of use it like as a checkpoint for like things I'm observing. Uh, and obviously if you're watching this, listening to it, if you have your own thoughts, comments, opinions on this kind of stuff, like leave them below. Uh, I think it's really good to to discuss this kind of thing. And it's because everyone's going to have different perspectives on it, right? and like I will have my own bias based on where I'm working, who I'm interacting with and same goes for you and the next person as well.

So, uh I think it's just good to have different perspectives that we can start looking at. So, um, not surprisingly, right, the the overwhelming thing I I've been hearing, which is, I'm assuming similar to what a lot of others are probably experiencing is this, you know, sort of fear around being replaced by AI, right? Like that's not that's not the new thing. uh that is what I suspect is the the more common narrative that I hear from people, right? But I I do feel like this is shifting a little bit. And so I think there are still if I had to guess, I don't have stats on this obviously, but I feel like still probably especially on social media and people I'm interacting with, there's this uh this fear of like being replaced by AI. And that doesn't just mean like in my current role I will be replaced by AI.

It's almost like there's a lot of people that aren't in the industry yet professionally, right? And so they're like the job that I am trying to go for is going to be replaced by by AI. So like a lot of aspiring software developers, right? So this is still the what I suspect is the most common thing that I'm kind of hearing. But at the same time, I think this is starting to shift a little bit. And sorry, I'm kind of glancing around everywhere because the highway is still closed from yesterday when I was driving and taking a a different path so I don't end up driving to Seattle. Um cuz that was kind of dumb. Google Maps. Uh you got to let me in. You got to let me in. There's no more road. You don't have a choice. Okay. And I actually have to move back mover.

Oh no. Okay. One more sec here. I have to go this way cuz the other way is north and that's not going to go to the office. Okay. So the the narrative around my my job. Why is this person flashing lights at me? What do you my door open or something? I'm watching you, pal. Um, being replaced by AI is shifting a little bit. more into being left behind. And that's taking a couple of uh of different shapes. My god, this truck is loud. And the person in front of me is not going fast enough that I can pass. So, give me one more sec, folks. I am so sorry. One, two, three. Okay. So, the this focus I'm not saying it's uh I'm observing a majority now in this category, but I'm this is the one that's ramping up the most is it's being left behind.

And this has a couple of different categories within it from conversations I've been having. So the first part is like is just using using AI and and uh and and building AI things. I want to I want to discuss this a little bit more so it makes a little bit more sense. But in terms of getting feedback and kind of this feeling of being left behind, it's like people are are starting to look around them at other software developers and they are going okay well these people are using claude or co-pilot or cursor or whatever tooling and I'm seeing people around me using these tools and being very effective or you know that's the the message being conveyed and like I don't know if I'm if I'm getting that yet. Right. So the side effect is that this feeling of everyone else is going faster than me or accelerating and I am not I am not there.

And this is a I would say like a kind of a typical thing that happens even in general with social media if that's how people are being influenced by this. But you're you're almost always going to get outliers from it that kind of exaggerate the the viewpoint that you have, right? Um, and I'm not saying that like AI is not helping people. Like I absolutely use AI in in, you know, as much as I can in my development now. But, um, I think you're always going to get these outliers that stand out and kind of exaggerate this this viewpoint, right? Like you don't hear about the person that got a like a 20% boost in productivity, which would be incredible anyway. You only hear about the people who are 10 or 100x what what their former peasant selves were, right? Like it's you're you're always seeing these stories that are just way way way further ahead.

Um and like I said, that exaggerates it. So you have these people that are concerned that they're not using AI tools how peers are, right? Or even people that I don't know like it's almost like everyone else except me is is getting this unlock. I'm going to be left behind. That's one kind of category of things. The second part to that is is I am a software developer building software and that could be product services whatever across any tech stack any domain and you're going but I'm not hooking up things like uh like agents I'm not hooking up things like LLM tool calls or I'm not using rag or whatever it might happen to be like I'm not using AI in the product or service that's being built, but there is no AI functionality, right? So, slightly different from the tool usage. It's not am I using C-pilot or Claude or whatever to to build software to write documents to like unlock my developer workflow.

It's I am not building things that use in some capacity LLMs. So, they're similar in the sense that like this is this is the day-to-day stuff that I do, but they're different in the sense that one is like my developer workflow versus like the product or service that's being created, right? And both of these are, you know, genuine concerns that I hear coming up, but it's been kind of an interesting journey with this stuff because the way that it comes up, it's like it doesn't seem like it's very clear because I think that these are two very different things, right? You you might be building something where it literally does not make sense to slam AI into it, right? It just may not make sense. Right. Um, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't use co-pilot or claude or whatever your favorite tools are to help you build whatever you're building, right?

And you might find the other way too. You might say like, "Hey, look, like we're integrating some type of LLM functionality into our product or service." And just as an example, like so we get to do that, but we have some company restrictions around like being able to use AI tools on our codebase for for whatever reason, right? I'm not here to say good or bad. Um, but you you might not be able to actually use some of the tools that you want, but you're still getting to go integrate AI functionality. So, I think that these are different things, but it's been interesting that when this stuff surfaces, it's not clear Right. And part of that is like even say at work uh some of the the way that we're getting feedback doesn't allow people to to kind of separate those things. So that's that's part of it.

I think um I think sometimes too that people are feeling a lot of pressure and stress from things in like related to AI and they might it might sound kind of funny and I don't mean to make this sound like I'm describing anyone's intelligence but like they might not even know right they might not know that is the thing that's bothering them because what they feel is this pressure and this stress of like I'm being left behind there's some type FOMO around it and fear, but they might not be able to pinpoint it because they haven't actually sat down and and kind of gone through like what is it that I'm I'm kind of worried about here? Just this feeling of I'm seeing stuff around me and like I'm not doing that.

So for me more recently I've been trying to understand this a little bit better because um at least as a engineering manager how I might go approach helping with these things looks different right in in the case of tooling um to me that's an easier one because that is personally something I feel like is very situational. Uh I feel like there's an education piece there. I feel like I can spend more time uh in, you know, kind of like one-on-one or small group sessions helping people out with that kind of stuff. We already have a lot of really good like showcases and demos and sharing of like success stories, but I'm personally trying to lean into the opposite side of that. I think those things are great. But for all the people that are like, "Okay, like that's only exaggerating this feeling I have of like, oh like I'm not that person giving the demo about how I 100xed my my code output and like what do I do now?" Right?

There I think there's still a bunch of people that are in this group. So I'm just trying to make sure I can spend time understanding that from people, right? Like there's no no shame in it. There's nothing to be In my opinion, right, no shame. There's nothing to be uh worried about in terms of like acknowledging that because I will put all of my This is like it's my job, right? This I will put as much effort as I possibly can into helping people be more effective. It's that's what I'm here for. And so if that means you're you're having challenges with uh the specific tools we have or the specific scenarios or whatever it is like I just I just need to know so that I can try my best to find different ways to help. That's all. And then from there it's like how do I how do I scale that more effectively?

Right? Just to make up an example, if I had five people on my team that fell into that category and then in sort of my slightly broader org, if there was like, you know, 30 people in total, it it might not be realistic for me to do like one-on-one sessions with everyone to to do that. But maybe maybe for some and maybe where I can, it's like, let me just do a small group session, I can pull in five or six people, do that a few times. Or I could do it for five or six people a couple times and then let them kind of help each other after that. Right? So like that's something that like not only do I feel like that's quite literally part of my job and like an expectation. I would expect that of me, but I actually really enjoy doing that.

So like I I need to as best as possible make sure that that's clear to people that um you know if you have any difficulty talking to your own manager about that then like don't please like come to me come to me talk to me about it we'll figure it out cuz uh because I want to be able to help and I think that there's been at least a handful of people that even in simple sessions like I would love to you know to tell all of you oh I am I'm just so good at AI, whatever that means. I'm just so good at it that, you know, spend one session with me and you'll also be the world's best AI developer. Uh, no, like it's just that I'm sharing different things and hopefully I can find uh a different perspective to share with these individuals that kind of gets them past whatever hurdle they're facing, right?

Or if they're like, I don't see the benefit uh for the things I've been trying. Cool. like can I show you maybe some other things and and we can navigate stuff. So, I've had a little bit of success that way so far. Um where I've had some people go like, "Oh I didn't know that. I didn't know I could do that." Right? Like a lot of people have been using AI for minimally like dock writing. uh minimally for smaller code changes, but like hey look, depending on the tool you're using and how you approach it, you might be able to get like a really good plan put together. It might be able to execute on most of it. And maybe the way that you've been trying it is that, you know, you're expecting perfection by the time it's done and you keep trying to oneshot things and getting disappointed, but like maybe that's just not the most effective way to use it.

or like maybe you can use AI to like actually collect data and make sense of it. So like maybe you can use AI to have multiple designs and compare them, right? Like there's so many different things you can try doing and I think some people just haven't had some of those experiences yet. So anyway, that's been um sort of a work in progress, something I'm trying to lean into. The other one that's a little bit more challenging for me is around like I want to build products or services that have AI integration in them. And so the reason that one's harder for me is because like that that may not fit right. It may make absolutely no sense to do that. And so it's hard to like I can't create that opportunity artificially, right? Give you an example. Because of the team I work on, there are different parts of the team and different like services that run that are extremely high performance and at extreme scale.

So like for example, we have a reverse proxy. Like what you're not going to do is get a request and then go I should go ask the LLM where to route this to. Like that that doesn't make sense. We can't have an LLM based router. It it can't work because of performance. That's and that's just how that is. That's physics. That's right. But that doesn't mean that we can't find other ways to to sort of find integrations. We just can't slam it into the hot path because that would be probably the most absurd experience ever for someone. So like where where can we do this kind of stuff, right? Is there data analysis? Are there uh you know service health things that we can look at that use AI uh augmented with signals from different things like are there other things that we can find

to help right uh how we do on call that kind of stuff so I think there's lots of opportunity that we can be building things with uh not only using AI to build them but integrating AI because that's the second part it's just that directly in our service it it doesn't make sense. And that might be the case for many people. And it might be the case that maybe AI could be a really awesome fit in your product or service, whatever it is. But maybe that's not where your product team is at yet, right? And I can understand that would be frustrating if you're like, "Holy like it would be so good if we had uh whatever type of LLM integration at this part of our our product." And like if that's not part of the road map that your product team is building out

like you could I think you could and should advocate for it because I think that everyone should be able to do that but like that that fundamentally might just be outside of your control in terms of a decision maker but I think that everyone should kind of speak up for it. So, that one's trickier for me because it's not, at least for us, it's not directly in our service, but I think I need to find ways to encourage people like if we think outside of like the direct thing we're building, how can we be using that? Because I think there are lots of uh lots of peripheral things where it makes a lot of sense. So, those are two parts.

And as I get closer to the office here, this last part is the one that I think is a little bit more I'm not saying it's necessarily like new, like I'm the first person to observe this, but it's starting to uh come up more in in conversations I'm having, which is again FOMO, but it's not about um oh, do I get to integrate an LLM into our our product. It's how do I get to be part of building those things, right? It's even more upstream to the point of like how could I be part of like how we put the models together? How can I be part of the technology that the developers are going to be using to build things? whether that's in their own developer tooling or whether that's in um like components that you'd be integrating into services to get you know LLM or otherwise AI augmented functionality.

So that one in my conversations is starting to be more and more and more apparent of like a wait a second like I am not I am not the person building the cutting edge thing and whether or not people felt this way before about themselves. I'm not sure. At least for the individuals I've talked to maybe that's something that they've they've experienced before and maybe not. I'm not totally sure. But I do think that there's like a like a hyper awareness forming around this because there's so much attention on AI that like if I'm not the one sort of at the core of it, does that mean that I'm going to be an obsolete developer, right? I'm just I'm barely a consumer of AI things and these other developers are the ones like literally putting the fundamental pieces together. So like what does that say about me, right?

Am I going to be obsolete for some other reason? Uh or like have a a skill set that's not useful because all these other people are are doing this stuff. Um that's that's definitely the more um new one that's surfacing. I I wasn't hearing anything about that before. That's again why I'm sharing. It's not like I'm discovering that people are talking about this for the first time. It's just in my my interactions. That's the one that's uh starting to to bubble up. So, um, be curious to hear again, like I said, from from you folks, like are there different categories of this kind of stuff that you're hearing about that you're thinking about? Um, is this mostly kind of what you're hearing? Maybe in different orders, different amounts, but would be very curious to to know. Um, I the one thing I feel good about is people I talk to at at work at least.

I I don't talk to people at work that that have a genuine fear of like, oh, I'm going to get fired and be replaced by an agent. And to me, that's very reassuring because that's not I mean, I don't think that plan makes any sense personally. Uh so I I'm I'm glad that that's not uh something that we have to spend a lot of time and energy on. But it is those other other parts, right? The fear of being replaced by AI. Uh that one's still very prevalent for me in like social media conversations or things a little bit more outside of my direct work. Still hear that a lot. On the on the last topic, I should I'm trying to think about like the the words or how to talk about it, but uh in terms of like how I'm navigating that as an engineering manager, um it's tricky, right?

Because I I I think that I think that it's absolutely fair that people feel the way they do about that, right? It's not for me to say like, "Oh, that's a dumb feeling." No, like that's that's how you feel about it. I can't I can't make comments about how you feel about something. Um, so when when I have conversations like that or I hear from people that are saying like, man, like I'm not the one building the models or the like working on the agentic harnesses or or you know, coming up with the next sort of LLM tech that we can use. When I hear people getting nervous about that, it's like I have a couple of angles to hit on, right? It's like number one, I I I'd like to to try and calm people when I can. Not to say your feelings are wrong or invalid, but like, hey, if you're anxious about this, like how can I how can I at least get you more calm?

Um, number two is to kind of like talk about at least in my opinion is like it's not new to have like a wave of technology that's like quite exciting, right? But I think of course with AI I think it's very exaggerated and that's kind of the the constant thing here is like everything with AI, the speed, the impact, it's all just so exaggerated. And I don't mean exaggerated like it's uh it's falsely doing something. I mean exaggerated in the sense that like you know the speed at which it's changing is absurd like so fast. Um the the amount of advancements in it um the impact that it's having is so dramatic. Right. So it's truly like exaggerating any other sort of tech shift that at least I've kind of lived through. So acknowledging it's not new to to have like these these tech changes, but like also acknowledging like hey maybe you're feeling this way especially because how exaggerated things are.

And then third is like like ultimately if someone's talking about their career and they're like I think it's genuinely important that like I need to be able to spend time on that kind of thing like I is I don't know for some people might sound funny or silly or crazy but like I I fully support that right. I'm not I'm not going to tell people like no no no no no like you are dumb or wrong for thinking like you should go try to do that in my opinion like if that's what you want to do and you're motivated by like that's how I want to stay cutting edge and I want that to be like how I approach my career then I like I support you. It's it's literally not for me to decide, right? I can try to give you information. I can try to share different perspectives, but ultimately like those are decisions that you make and I support people's decisions on that kind of stuff.

So like do I have those own fears for myself? Like sure, a little bit. But I also know like I'm the the general skills and things that we we gain as software engineers like very transferable. So it might just be like catching up on tech. I think as long as you're staying as much as you can up to speed on changes transferable. So I'm not that nervous but I you know I I do think that it's important to like have those conversations with people make sure that they understand their feelings are valid and then it's like cool you are feeling this way like what what do we do with the feeling right? Is this something where it's like we can we can calm you. You can still see like hey I'm I am still very valuable like things are okay or maybe you do understand that and you're like it's not sufficient for me and this is like a maybe something I need to go investigate more for my career and then absolutely right.

I think it's just about being informed and not doing it like purely out of a reaction. So those are some thoughts for today. curious on your opinions. And if you have questions on this unrelated to this, leave them below in the comments. I'm happy to make a follow-up video for you. And I appreciate you being here. So, I'll see you next time.