Comment by gnarcoregrizz
5 days ago
I think most white-collar people have similar feelings. I certainly am, and many dev-friends and coworkers have confided such to me.
My software skills are now irrelevant. I've accepted that the omniscience robot is a better engineer than me. No clue what I'm going to do next, but I have to figure it out fast once my job disappears.
I wanted a family, but I'm relieved that I don't have one now. I can't imagine the stress and pressure of that with how weird everything is now. I'm nearing the end of the timeline for that anyway, being in my late 30s. Probably a blessing in disguise.
I have a some good hobbies that keeps me on my toes (physically, mentally) and a full social and family life fortunately. That's what fills my cup. I'm not stoked about tech anymore anyway.
I have a hard time seeing how any other white-collar job can be as worried as software development. No other industry has the straight up replacement of their work, at a level, quality, and speed, that AI coding is. AI agents are literally better (when you factor time) than even some of the best developers I've known in my career. It's over.
Have you used Claude to do system administration? Networking? It's definitely not just software guys that should be worried. And then there's management -- several layers of management can just go away.
Probably not exactly as worried, but given software development was the first industry seriously targeted by the labs, and given the mission of nearly every startup these days is "automate the entire workflow of X knowledge work role with AI", I can see why they would still find the near-term outlook bleak.