That's not to say they're the majority by any means: the "I am 100x more productive with AI," "I haven't hand-coded in months and love it," "adapt or become irrelevant" posts by True Believers haven't slowed down and still make up the lion's share, especially on places like LinkedIn, where voicing dissent can have real-world consequences for your job and future employability (I may have learned this the hard way after being laid off for nebulous "misalignment" reasons). But still, the non-believers, from mild skeptics to full-on haters, do seem more vocal than, say, six months or a year ago.
Questions:
1. Have you noticed this shift too, or is it just my social media algorithm surfacing these more?
2. What can we (devs) realistically do before accepting this as the new normal? Early retirement is one option, and some have already taken it ([5]) or plan to in the coming years.
I'm seriously considering early retirement too (at least from tech) but I was recently contacted by a recruiter for a role that, among other things, mentions "zero AI-assisted coding." My eyes lit up, but it also got me thinking: are there more companies like this just keeping a low profile? Could a critical mass of vocal, defiant devs proclaiming "I will not be bullied, shamed, or forced into agentic coding" actually shift the narrative that AI coding is inevitable? Could contrarian companies and founders start advertising "organic, human-written" code as a quality signal and a perk for attracting experienced craftsmen who refuse to bow to AI mandates? Maybe I'm just daydreaming and the answer to all of the above is no but I'm still early in the grieving process, somewhere between denial and anger rather than depression, let alone acceptance.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48668199
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651675
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ueidyv/software_engineers_are_facing_an_identity_crisis/
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ufed4k/software_engineers_are_facing_an_existential/
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1uew891/older_tech_workers_are_tapping_out_taking_early/
Yes. But have you considered that one of those consequences could be that companies who are not pushing AI will see that and give you an interview.
If you have criteria that would make you reject a job, regardless of how unpopular it might be, you should be shouting it form the rooftops. Any company who chooses not to engage with you because of it is saving you time and energy. Any application that gets no response because of it saves you from an interview process that would have failed, or worse - a job you would have hated. Which means that anyone who is engaging with you for interviews already knows your opinion and they are OK with it.
BTW, I'm not sure your opinion is unpopular. The concept of the "vocal minority" seems to be at play these days, as for every dev I know and work with who is positive about AI, 2 others are negative about it.
> The concept of the "vocal minority" seems to be at play these days, as for every dev I know and work with who is positive about AI, 2 others are negative about it.
Oh I am aware it's unpopular with a growing fraction of devs. The question is whether this sentiment can tip the balance for companies and hiring decisions too, similarly to how COVID tipped the balance for remote/hybrid work in a way it was inconceivable before.
There are plenty of small/medium businesses that are not tech-forward, and where even SOTA from 20 years ago will wow them. They tend not to pay especially well, and their businesses are often in decline because they aren’t aggressive about improvement, but they are surviving and punching the clock.
For example, one place I worked used emails as source control. They'd email what was done at the end of the day to the manager. The emails had a limit of ~100 MB. So, emails bounced.
They used emails for all communication too. Lots of people were always busy all the time, working overtime, and completely ignoring anything through email. I complained to the CEO that people were just ignoring emails, and he scolded me and told me that when working, you're supposed to always CC their manager and the CEO, otherwise they won't do it.
Since the PM was spammed with code, all emails to her bounced and she didn't know what was going on. It's possible this was deliberate.
I tried to get them on (free) Slack and git. They thought it was nice, but never had time to actually adopt it.
Project management was done through Excel. One manager opening a single excel sheet on his laptop. Every day, they opened it and went through every item and asked if it was done and when it would be done. After meetings, he'd have nothing to do, so he'd talk to the devs asking if they were done yet, or random questions like, "What is DevOps?"
I talked to the CEO about improving hiring. He told me they usually just have one applicant who fits the salary range and had the qualifications. The rest of the applicants probably couldn't unzip a file.
I've worked at places that mandated a particular editor, programming language, or methodology. Those mandates were rarely the reason people joined. The healthier organizations tended to define the outcome they wanted and let engineers choose the tools, provided the results justified the choice.
I wouldn't be surprised if AI ends up following the same pattern.
But they are a reason people won't apply in the first place, or decide to opt out once they find out in the interview process. Pretty sure I'm not the only one that wouldn't join a Windows-only shop or one that mandates using a corporate laptop with always-on spyware.
At times like that every company will be looking for developers who can build without AI assistance and people likeyou will be admired by many who used AI but now realize that was a mistake. Thousands of those AI devs will be unknown to the basics of developing they can't even solve a coding problem themselves.
Keep your morale high and you will see this happening soon and we may want to hire you in future well once we grow enough to hire high standard devs.
I don’t let LinkedIn bring me down, I mean the performative normality is so cringe that I don’t feel embarrassed at all to have a profile pic there wearing fox ears. On a normal social network you hear a ‘ding’ sound because somebody liked your post, LinkedIn makes a ‘ding’ whenever I post something. It has embraced A.I. slop and slop about A.I. because the average user otherwise wouldn’t post anything at all. That’s how they can tell me I’m one of the most visible users and need to be verified.