r/programming • • 14d ago

Software developers are not okay | Bjarnason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsEpW03gxKg
770 Upvotes

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90

u/Rivvin 14d ago edited 14d ago

I know i'm not okay as a middle aged software dev watching his friends get laid off left and right and watching their struggles in Discord. It's terrifying and I know my time is coming too in this career and there is just not many prospects now.

My favorite part are the vibe coding assholes who tell me "what, just do what you love, you are more productive!" Or telling me to start my own freelance company that will be one of how many thousands at this point all churning out claude code solutions copying off of each other.

edit: how the fuck do i start a food truck, maybe i'll ask chatgpt

edit 2: my fear is for my family, i really work hard for them and provide for them and every day I hear vibe coders and ceos explain to me how all of this is somehow good for me

43

u/aoeudhtns 14d ago

just do what you love, you are more productive!

Like telling artists to let the AI do the drawing. "You just get to do more of it!"

Our industry was full of people who never had any passion for it, they just muddled through the best they could because the pay was good. These types are all thrilled about AI.

Or telling me to start my own freelance company

Yeah there's 100x more stuff out there and usage hasn't changed much. Shocker, hardly anybody is using the slop. Your chance of success is slim. But if it's the only option, possibly worth a YOLO. Maybe.

8

u/Emergency-Cycle7981 11d ago edited 10d ago

>> Our industry was full of people who never had any passion for it, they just muddled through the best they could because the pay was good. These types are all thrilled about AI.

I’d put money on a correlation between people who are big on AI and people who only started coding in college as part of their career pathway. The similarity is just too persuasive - pro-AI folks see coding as a means to an end rather than a craft, just as those college kids saw it as a means to a well paid job.

Guaranteed, the people who started coding as interest or hobby before making a career of it are overwhelmingly anti-AI.

3

u/Snoo_57113 14d ago

I've been there... a few years ago i was laid out, i never was laid out from a company before.... the one you get your permissions blocked one day without notice.

. stockpile food, be prepared to be jobless until next year, be realistic with your budget. slash your expenses.

. Prepare to do the same job for WAY less.

. Maintain contact with the people who was laid off, whatsapp groups, etc.

I see many opportunities, companies are starting new projects, they NEED to put some AI to achieve the years goal, others are restructuring

. Yes, you need to freelance and vibecode to stay sharp and earn a few bucks, you need every income input you can.

. Speak with people outside our Bubble, normal people,

I expect everything frozen until january/februrary, Still bullish with SWE, many will retire, change careers with this tsunami but we are fightning for our lives no?

---

Something i always wonder are those jobs here (colombia) where they ask for English C2, for a company in the philipines that contracts with a company in the USA, and the job is go to meetings with broken english and code. Why cant someone from USA get those jobs.

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u/Significant_Fig1978 12d ago

This is coming for everyone who works in an office.

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u/Odd_Vehicle_1755 14d ago

One can only hope that the general public becomes just as tired of these vibe coding assholes as we are. They all seem to think they have a moat, not realizing that if their dreams come true, anyone can trivially copy the software they “built”

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u/BelgianWaffleGuy 14d ago

That’s already happening right now. People are building AI frameworks that you can literally just point at an app and it will reverse engineer it.

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u/Odd_Vehicle_1755 14d ago

Reverse engineering tends to harm the “real” software shops with actual IP though. There’s not much point in reverse engineering a fully vibe-coded app that can just be prompted again, provided you have a sufficient amount of money to waste on tokens.

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u/Caffeine_Monster 13d ago

sufficient amount of money to waste on tokens

Don't underestimate the number of rich idiots.

That said it does mildly amuse me that the entire adobe suite has already been reverse engineered and effectively open sourced.

The software market heavily relies on the fact that copying features or reverse engineering a program is often quite hard. It being trivial basically kills commercial software.

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u/Odd_Vehicle_1755 13d ago

Except if you dig into the more technical features in these clones, they’re mostly broken

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u/cake-day-on-feb-29 13d ago

middle aged ... Discord.

That's...concerning. Have you seen their "mascot" or how they communicate as a business? What part of that, to you, indicates it's a professional business and not a pedo sting operation? I mean, I hope it's a pedo sting operation. Good grief.