HACKER Q&A
📣 taiboku256

Is AI replacing any software jobs?


Mainstream news outlets make it sound like software jobs are actively being replaced by AI. Is anybody actually seeing this?

From my perspective, AI is “a really cool autocomplete”, but nowhere near replacing actual humans, including intern-level.

Am I missing something?


  👤 samoit Accepted Answer ✓
My personal case: (I am a software engineer)

I basically stopped using "stack overflow" web to help me find code issues. Now I just ask the model. It's usually faster and much more concise. Also many of my google search has been discontinued and just use a model to ask what I want. The only problem is about being updated. Models have a set of trained data so new content is not there. So for very recent or new things old "googling" still there...


👤 byoung2
What is happening now is current software engineers are using it to make their jobs easier but they still have jobs. We are a long way from product people being able to ask AI to write production code. But we are probably pretty close to junior devs and interns being at risk.

👤 kadushka
Not yet. It will probably start later this year: instead of hiring a junior swe, companies will buy gpt-5 or claude-4 subscriptions and ask senior engineers to deliver more.

Mass layoffs are still 2-3 years away, but I’m expecting this time next year the team I’m on will shrink because of AI.