How should software engineers adapt to AI-driven layoffs?

With major tech companies laying off mid-level engineers due to AI efficiency gains, what strategies are engineers using to stay competitive?

I'm interested in both immediate adaptations from those affected and how upcoming CS graduates are preparing for an AI-augmented industry.

What does the engineering career look like in the future ?

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Terr_ 5 months ago | parent | next [-]

Assuming it's a real trend rather than hype/excuses... It'll be interesting to see all the bugs and maintenance headaches that occur on a delay. That said, the job market can probably stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent.

I expect to lean heavily on softer skills like "being able to collaborate with product owners help them figure out what they actually want to build", or "able to usefully simplify concepts in a way that helps non-developers make decisions."

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RicoElectrico 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it really AI or an excuse for a COVID / low interest rates over-hire?

I find it very confusing that everyone took the AI narrative at face value, and the AI "replacement" as fait accompli. Did it happen at all? At best, AI is intern level right now.

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paradite 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I recently wrote my thoughts on this topic.

https://github.com/paradite/ai-replace-swe

Short answer: Leverage AI, become more productive with AI and make sure you can output more value than just AI itself. Also move up the value chain to product management, team management.

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kasey_junk 5 months ago | parent [-]

It’s a strange idea that team management is going to be more valuable if individual engineers are more productive.

I’m actually _more_ worried about team managers than line engineers when it comes to AI impact.

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paradite 5 months ago | parent | next [-]

I think someone needs to "manage" these AI engineers still, to supervise them working, and review code, PRs.

It's less about personal development, but more on performance management.

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matt_s 5 months ago | parent | prev [-]

AI can’t attend meetings and converse with humans on other teams to understand what the priorities are, what features need to be built, what issues are happening, etc.

	▲	kasey_junk 5 months ago \| parent [-]
		I was in a meeting this week where a manager stepped away for 60% of the meeting, came back, got the ai summary and didn’t lose anything…

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scarface_74 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s funny, when this article was submitted earlier today…

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/you-blamed-dei-for-hur...

Someone said that people would start blaming AI.

It’s not AI. There are too many people chasing too few jobs and the BigTech companies aside from Google are focusing on profitable segments.

The IPO market is dead and which caused the entire VC Ponzi scheme to collapse.

As far as upcoming CS graduates? They are screwed. Why would most companies want to hire new grads when there are proven experienced people looking for jobs?

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gnz11 5 months ago | parent [-]

New grads will work for less and less compensation?

	▲	scarface_74 5 months ago \| parent [-]
		And they are spending months doing negative work. How much use are new grads for the first year? Especially with remote work, you can find plenty of experienced CRUD/enterprise/framework devs willing to work for $125K.

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gdhkgdhkvff 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Senior eng at a big tech here. Layoffs have nothing to do with AI. There’s more work to do then any time in recent memory because of the shift going on with AI enablement. Layoffs are because of a few things.

1. Coordinated layoffs flood the market with talent forcing wages down overall and creating a chilling effect for existing employees. Believe it or not, layoffs are actually having the reverse effect from what some might think. They don’t make people want to leave, they make people scared to leave.

2. Wall Street loves layoffs.

3. Money is more expensive now.

4. Layoffs have a performative aspect for the incoming administration that all tech execs are so desperately trying to publicly please.

5. The narrative that “tech employees are lazy mooches” that’s been pushed by tech execs in alternative media has become mainstream. Places like the AllIn podcast and anything that Musk posts on Twitter have been pushing this narrative for a while and people have bought it. Since people think this now, it gives tech execs much more leeway in cutting employees “because they were underperforming” rather than “because we don’t have enough money” or “because Wallstreet wants us to.”

Ask any manager at big tech companies. They’ve been WANTING to hire for like 2 years now, but hiring freezes because of budget constraints have left them without the wanted headcount. Pretty strange that managers almost universally have been wanting to hire, but been told “no we don’t have the budget,” but then layoffs come through and it’s “because ai is handling all the work!”

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gashmol 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The layoffs and/or pay cuts are coming this year.

I don't see companies keeping large engineering head counts when they can get working software in minutes from specs.

So, I suggest you become better in writing software specs.

Writing specs is safe for the foreseeable future because:

1. There is still no ai architecture that is comparable to human brain other than rot memory.

2. There is no enough data to train a model from such architecture if and when it's invented.

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skydhash 5 months ago | parent [-]

It’s like people have never read any books about software project management. While coding skills matters, most failures isn’t due to lack of language knowledge or coding speed.

	▲	sky2224 5 months ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly. I've repeated this a lot this month: Coding is the easy part.

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exitb 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So, Salesforce stops hiring software engineers, but OpenAI has 20 pages of open positions? That doesn't sound quite right.

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AznHisoka 5 months ago | parent [-]

That makes complete sense to me. OpenAI is selling shovels and putting $$$ into improving and selling those shovels.

Salesforce (and other app builders) are buying those shovels (AI) to lower costs to build applications

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exitb 5 months ago | parent [-]

Keeping this analogy, I guess it would be like not using shovels to build a shovel factory. Obviously, OpenAI needs a group of very talented experts, which are not getting replaced by AI soon, but they hire for all kinds of positions, including regular software engineers.

	▲	kadushka 5 months ago \| parent [-]
		Even if OpenAI hires 1000 people this year at $1M salary each, that’s just $1B. This year they plan to spend $8.7B. People they hire are still competitive with their best models, so why not hire people? Though I’ll be surprised if they’re still hiring two years from now.

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moomoo11 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Start a food company. People need to eat.

	▲	meiraleal 5 months ago \| parent [-]
		That's where my thoughts are

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billconan 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm buying AI tech stocks and studying AI in depth.

	▲	Terr_ 5 months ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I'm buying AI tech stocks I'm not sure that's really hedging your bets, since there are a bunch of potential futures where you might lose your job and those stocks lose value.
	▲	scarface_74 5 months ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		So is everyone else…

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gaws 5 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Learn a trade.

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5 months ago | parent | prev [-]

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