I studied artificial intelligence at master's level, and I'm wondering what that means for my long-term job security as AI tools improve.

My concern is whether AI/ML roles themselves could eventually be automated, even for people with a strong technical background. Does understanding how these systems work offer a lasting advantage, or could the same tools also reduce demand for the people building and applying them?

For people working in AI/ML, which parts of your work still require the most human judgment? What skills would you focus on now to stay employable: deeper ML knowledge, software engineering, data engineering, deployment, or domain expertise?

I'd appreciate practical experiences, especially from people who have seen their roles change.

Hello!

I have been in the workforce for almost 1.5 decades now. Lately, I have been considering what to do next with my career that would earn me more money.

Here is my profile:

• Started as a software engineering analyst (those guys who support production applications and debug code and scripts, but very rarely writes code)
• Became a sysadmin, 3x (UNIX and Linux flavours)
• DevOps engineer (tooling monkey)
• Wrote tens of Ansible roles and playbooks
• DevOps engineer (piece together the application repo and the tools made by the tooling monkeys)

As you can see, I don't have a solid coding and low-level experience. No architectural experience either. It's somewhere in between. I have no masters and my CS bachelors was not that solid.

Some of the options I considered in the past:

• Specialize in a cloud platform - I never had the chance to land a cloud role mainly because of the disconnect between my YoE and the starting pay for people with 0 cloud experience. Nowadays, it feels like the job market is already saturated with 'cloud engineers' with tens of certifications.
• Move to a management role - I never liked navigating company politics and dealing with people's attitudes. I'm confident I can, I just don't like these.

What do you think should be my next career progression based on this? Of course, I am open to putting in the work.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: one path I am considering is still Linux-based but specializing in low-level systems instead of being a sysadmin. For example, working with high-performance networking, memory management, profiling, etc. I recently landed interviews with similar roles (job titles were all Linux Engineer) and I felt like the interviewers were put off because my skills were not 'low-level enough'.

Got placed at a product-based company as an Associate Full stack Developer from a crap college at the start of this year. Did my internship until August. Had a probation period which was supposed to end in November. Out of nowhere I get a MS Teams meeting invitation "regarding my employment".

Joined the meeting and they let 17 of us know that our roles are redundant because of AI and we are no longer needed. I literally was working on my probation report which I was supposed to submit on the 23rd and now they let me know they no longer needed me.

I'm upset, demotivated and frustrated that stuff like this happens out of the blue. Not a single hint that I was going to get sacked but here I am now. Thankfully I saved up most of my money so it will keep me afloat for a while.

Looking for another job in this economy is looking like hell. I guess I'll take some time off and brush up DSA again and attempt at another job. It's a shame because the workplace was really close by and the pay was decent too.

I actually tried to dodge AI for most of my degree, I just make games. I'm not some coding whiz, I knew what I needed to know for exams and kept it moving to the next class.

But I try to make projects I enjoy, that's really all I got. Not even leetcode. No undergrad research.

It really seems like AI is miles better than me.

People around me in school seem to tell me: "they'll always need someone to verify it" , "the funding will dry up" , "they need someone to fix the slop", "energy can't meet the demand"

But idk, it seems like we are really going full steam ahead. So many people already saying the job has shifted from problem solving to code review just as a mainstay. People saying "oh it can't design complex systems" , okay since when do Juniors do that?

It feels like that's just expected now.

Would it be right to assume that even if the AI train slows down, the expectation of a Junior has gone way up for good and essentially cooks all non high performers?

For someone mid like myself - should I show myself out?

The intentions behind programs to adopt AI tooling are two: - Prepare a layoff for about 80% software engineers to increase margins - Improve the efficiency so we can deliver more and better products

Asking those who have gone through either path, what were the signs that made you realize the real intentions behind your company AI programs?

In my current company, I see a sudden and strong push from a non-technical CEO on all VPs to do something. Our CTO is talking about human judgement still being important, but he wouldn’t be a C-level if he couldn’t keep a secret.

I am pretty sure I am in the top 20% engineers when it comes to usefulness and my ability to use AI is good, but I am also in the top 20% when it comes to TC. I have an option to jump ship, so I’d like to understand the risk of staying.

I know a friend from Asia that moved to EU and worked for a bank in Europe(Sweden) since there were no local people who were good enough at AWS, devops stuff like him.

He was working as Solution Architect or something like that

He worked there for 10 years but later on he got fired because

1. His salary is expensive
2. He trained other devs for months or years and now they can do his tasks + because of automation system.
3. Econmy is bad.

So he spent 4-7 months and still couldn't find a job in Sweden so he decided to move back to Asia

And he used his network, asking people/companies that he worked with in the past.

And somehow he got 2 job offers within 2 months for other European bank but it got an office in Asia.

Ngl I feel happy for him.

And it is kinda insane to think that someone working for a bank over 10 years and one day a company fired him and he had to move his family and his daughter who just study in grade 4 back to Asia ;(

I haven't been on this sub for quite a while, but I remember most people being very worried for their future in technology due to the saturation of the job field and rise of AI.

I also was very worried for my future. I had invested many years of my life and debt to get a CS degree well into my 30s just for the market to become ultra competitive. Of course I got my degree while working full time so I never had internships or projects to speak of.

I finally finished my degree after like six years and got a promotion to help desk technician at the manufacturing company I was working at. I have been working that position for the last year and half and was just informed that they have promoted me to 'Full Stack Engineer'.

The company was implementing a warehouse management system to integrate with our ERP system and I saw the holes in the project and rushed in to fill them. I wrote two major pieces of software for the company that are being used on a daily basis including our automated order release system and a shipping app for our non-stocked items that ERP doesn't touch. I was informed if it were not for my efforts that the project would've not launched.

My recommendation to anyone with zero IT experience is to take the first best offer that you can get and demonstrate your capabilities within that role. At the time, I was just happy that I could get any tech related job at all, even if it was help desk. My resume is worst resume on this sub, so it was a blessing to just get that help desk job. I nearly got kicked out of school multiple times.

The leap from help desk to full stack engineer required a lot of effort as you may suspect. I worked many weekends, provided after hours support, led meetings, and made critical decisions. We just went live with our project and my software has already released thousands of orders and shipped hundreds of packages.

Prior to this position, I was a lead for a different department and I worked other stressful jobs over the years. That's the thing, I am coming into this at the age of 34 and many of you are in your early 20s and lack the soft skills that employers are looking for. The most important experience you can bring to a job are critical thinking and soft skills. A lot of this comes down to experience and age - and that is okay. Go work a help desk job, get some certs, become a sys admin, and get experience that life throws at you.

I am going from an overpaid help desk to an underpaid full stack engineer. 64k -> 71k (with 8% yearly bonus). HCOL area where median for full stack engineer is 125k. But you know what this doesn't bother me in the slightest and I am more than happy to gain the experience and build my salary over the years. As long as I work as hard as I have over the years, things will work in my favor.

Anyway, I hope this provides some inspiration to anyone feeling down about their job prospects. Let me know if you have any questions.

I’m trying to figure out whether I can take a software/tech job advertised as "United States (Remote)" while physically living in East Asia.

Would like to do this but would want to know the risks.

I am tired of babysitting everyone in my team. There is a woman works remotely in my team not always show up in standup. Her PRs don't follow the instructions. Adding nonsense stuff outside the scope of her tickets. No test cases and no description about what she did.

Another new grad in office with a master degree in CS, she has trouble with basic RDBMS concepts. Using AI to generate code without review. She did something like fetching the entire table and filter the results instead of just query the matched results from DB directly. (The table is huge can easily hit few million rows in production). I have to work on everything like Java, TypeScript, Python development, System design, DB migration, different kinds of testing, understand hardware and work with the embedding systems, CI/CD pipeline, building Docker images and compose files etc...

Since our main business is selling hardware solution with software as additional service, the CEO and founder is a sales background doesn't know much about software development.

I don't understand why we can't hire proper candidates. And recently my colleague interviewed a guy with master degree for networking related position. From what I heard that guy doesn't even know how to use SSH and basic bash commands.

Hi all,

Posting to see if others in this community might’ve had a similar background as me as I’m pondering future career navigation. The cliffs notes of my experience is: freelancer in the arts -> bootcamp in 2023 -> get a job at a non-tech company at beginning of 2024 (extremely lucky) working on niche but fun/interesting work (some of which I had a lot of ownership over which helped in my interviews) -> about to start a new job, also at a non-tech F500 company. I’m in the Midwest in my early 30s.

Overall, I’m very happy with where I’m at compared to when I was living gig to gig, but wondering how to most maximize my time at my new job if I might want to someday set my sights on big tech. The current move is more or less lateral title-wise, but I was not seeing the growth opportunities I wanted at my last job so I was looking to make a change.

Maybe I’ll get to my new job and be totally happy and want to stick around and I’m looking forward to it, but what might be the best way to prep for FAANG or FAANG-adjacent work someday? Would appreciate any advice from those who might’ve had a similar background/experience.

Thanks!

WHY ARE LEVEL I JOBS REQUIRE 3+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE!!??

I am going to graduate this December, have two internships totaling little over a year. International Student, and CPT got denied because of a new rule so couldn’t continue with the internship.

Applying to jobs since September and started to get rejections. I don’t know what to do, referrals aren’t working, previous internship employer said they only hire senior level roles.

HOW COOKED AM I?

I wouldn't mind learning frontend if i have to, but i kind of only want to do backend to cut down learning time.

I’m not sure if it’s the circles I find myself in, but I do frequent some discord channels for certain Linux applications I use and world of Warcraft Addons.

I’ve met some absolutely brilliant people. But I noticed a similar pattern: many of them are also flat broke. Like broke broke.

I don’t understand how someone can be so tech brilliant but be living almost destitute.

Is it just that most of them are autistic and can’t work in a corporate environment?

I’ve seen the pattern too many times to ignore it as coincidence. Like these people are more brilliant coders than people I’ve met working for big tech companies, but are living on government subsidies and rent assistance.

I’m currently an SDE at Amazon with 1.5 YOE and am on a PIP. I’ve been interviewing and recently received two offers. I’m trying to decide which would be the better move for my career.

Offer 1: Chewy — Software Engineer I (Backend)
$120K base
$48K initial RSU grant vesting over 4 years
Eligible for annual discretionary RSU grants targeted at 40% of base salary
Eligible for a merit increase in the next review cycle
Hybrid (3 days onsite)

Offer 2: Seed-Funded Startup — Software Engineer (Platform)
$115K base
20K options vesting over 4 years (uncertain value)
Previously raised seed funding and is now beginning its Series A fundraising process

My biggest priorities are WLB, career growth, and job stability. After my experience at Amazon, I want to find a healthier engineering culture where I can grow without constantly worrying about performance management or burning out.

I’m leaning toward Chewy because it’s a more established company with publicly traded equity. However, I’m unsure about its engineering culture, WLB, and whether it would be significantly different from Amazon.

The startup could offer more technical ownership and faster career growth, but I’m concerned about its funding runway, job stability, and whether the WLB could be worse.

EDIT: my manager at chewy will be a former Amazon manager so that’s one thing I’m nervous about

Our token spend is orders of magnitude less than what we are paying for random consultants, PMs, and AI engineers. Massive amounts of scope creep (ex: let's rebuild a multibillion dollar AI startup in house instead of paying for it), endless POCs, demos, and presentations, explaining to upper management what a RAG is, actual deployment of a alpha version is still months away.

Am I the only one with horror stories like this? Every time I log onto linkedin there is a new story about how AI is going to make [x] profession obsolete yet my lived experience is the opposite.

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/changes-coming-to-canada-s-express-entry-immigration-system/article_eebb06d8-697b-5300-9fe0-a877bf33d7b0.html

Companies will hire the cheaper worker most of the time, Canadian government has decided that high-salary (57k+ CAD) jobs do not need labour market opinion check (ie. no check if a local can do the job) for prioritizing for permanent visa. In other words, Canadian tech market will eventually be flooded with immigrant devs willing do the work for 57k.

Or am I wrong and this will usher in a new golden age for Canadian tech?

Edit: here's the current government outlook for software developers: https://www.services.labour.gov.on.ca/labourmarket-ui/jobProfile?nocCode=21232&lang=en

Edit: please be civil, we don't want to give anyone the excuse they're looking for to lock the thread.

I was like 2-3 back then but I read that in the past during DotCom, any companies that have HTML websites

They are seen as top shit companies like they are today Google or Nvidia.

And devs back then coded in Notepads and sometimes write code/algorithim in a physical paper loL

And they used a CD disk to store code unlike today we use GIT.

Zuck was probably 20-21 and wrote Facebook in PHP and tried to compete against MySpace, MSN or something

Besides people who were 20-30 that time they probably got their first job as SWE easily with HTML, SQL, and can build simple CRUD app like ToDoList without doing 8 rounds of interviews.

--
Unlike today where I as Gen Z CS kid grew up and learn to code from IDE like Blue j, CodeBlock, VS code.

And at work I just use AI to code and review the AI generated code.I

It is kinda hard to get a job nowadays if you don't have a good network or if you are not the top 10% of the rest or something.

Besides it feels like IT/technology they move so fast nowadays.

Hello all,

Let me give you some quick context about my career so far. I'm a 35M from Spain where I studied my CS degree, and later I did a Master's that gave me the chance to spend the second year in the US on a work visa so that's what I did.

After finishing the Master's I started working for a US startup in 2015 and lived there for three years. In 2018 I decided to head back to Spain, but the company let me keep working remotely so I took the opportunity. In 2020 the startup was acquired by a much bigger company and I was the only one who stayed on after the buyout, continuing to work remotely from Spain until recently. Over all those years I was consistently a top performer and the feedback from my managers was always great.

This year there were some organizational changes and things started shifting. I also became a father three months ago, and when I came back from paternity leave the company told me that keeping a US salary while living in Spain was no longer possible, asking me to take almost a 50% pay cut. I obviously declined so we just parted ways.

After more than a decade in tech I have a solid network with plenty of doors to knock on when I'm ready, but I've been thinking about taking a break for a while and having a 3-month-old feels like the perfect moment. Working on a US salary from Spain for so long put me in a very comfortable financial spot, so I can easily afford taking time off for as long as I need.

My plan is to take about a year off to enjoy life and focus on my family, but I still want to put in a few hours a week on something technical so I stay sharp and have something to show when I decide to get back out there. Basically my question is, what would be the best way to spend that small amount of time to stay competitive?

A few options I'm considering:

• Personal project: I already have an idea in mind that could be fun to build and would give me something concrete to demo down the road.
• Open source: I've never contributed to open-source projects before, but it seems like a good way to show public work since my entire career has been in private repos, though I wonder if the learning curve is too steep for just a few hours a week.
• Refresh some of the basics: I have some very good O’Reilly Computer science, Software Engineering and Machine Learning books. Might be a good time to refresh my memory with some of the complex theory.
• LeetCode or similar: Is grinding LeetCode still relevant in the AI era and actually worth the time for future interviews?

If you have any recommendations on what to focus on during a break like this to stay in a good spot for the market later, I'd really appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks everyone!

Hey everyone,

I recently applied for a Senior SWE role at this Drupal web development agency, and I received a mandatory home assignment before any introductory call or recruiter screen, with a 5-day deadline.

The scenario is a fictional 6-person web agency " managing ~50 client sites (WordPress/Drupal/Shopify), and they want a monitoring service to learn about outages and such.

Here is what they want built and designed:

Part A: Monitoring Service:

Build a working monitoring microservice from scratch. It has to check 50+ sites in a local Docker setup for availability, response times, keywords, and TLS expiry with dynamic check frequencies based on criticality. It also requires building custom debouncing logic to prevent alert storms, state storage/history, automated tests, and notification stubs.

Part B: Azure Architecture:

- Deploy the monitoring service to Azure with cost estimates and repeatable deployment definitions.

- Design a target multi-region high-availability hosting strategy on Microsoft Azure for privacy-sensitive clients. Requirements: all data must stay in Canada, and sites must survive the total loss of an entire Azure region with explicit RPO/RTO commitments. Covers compute, databases, files, backups, secrets, networking, and edge.

Part C: Written Explanation:

An up to 8-page document covering architectural trade-offs, how the monitoring scales to 500 sites, CMS-specific monitoring, self-monitoring, security, cost, and a future roadmap.

What gets me is that this is sent before any human conversation. No intro call, no culture check, just straight into designing a multi-region disaster recovery cloud architecture and a full monitoring suite.

Thoughts?

I’m a bit of a crossroads right now with working at my company. it’s a small business where im the only engineer and I work with non technical boss. I built their entire software product and now he wants me train a non technical colleague with no cs background to vibe code a new product under my guidance. What that means is I need to train them and help while taking on my usual responsibilities. I truly hate working at this place because it’s becoming more toxic and I’m being burdened with so many responsibilities and being underpaid. I really don’t want to help non technical colleague and just let them vibe code the product and let it turn to shit. Am I just overthinking because I feel like I’m being replaced or should I help out ?

I recently wrote this post, asking why companies aren’t using AI to build more instead of cutting developers.

Honestly, the replies were pretty sobering. I wasn’t expecting so many people here to have such a bleak outlook on our future.

What stuck with me most: AI doesn’t have to replace every developer for things to get ugly. Smaller teams doing the same work, fewer openings, and more applicants competing for those positions would be enough.

We’re becoming more productive while worrying that this very productivity will make us less needed.
If that’s the future you expect, what are you personally doing about it?

Do you already have a Plan B? Are you specializing, moving into another area of tech, or looking outside the industry? Or are you staying because you love the work and don’t currently see a better alternative?

I’m equally interested in hearing from people who think this outlook is too pessimistic. What experiences from your actual work make you doubt that better AI will significantly reduce the number of developers companies need? What parts of the job still leave enough work to make you feel needed, even as code generation gets faster?

Right now, I’m less concerned about whether developers will still exist at some point in the future, and more concerned about whether this will remain a career worth building the next few decades of your life around.
How are you answering that question for yourself?

28YO with 7 years of experience as a data eng.

just got out of a recruiter screening for a wealth management fund, the recruiter had a genuine crash out and asked point blank : "Just to make sure and avoid any further embarassment, you know SQL right ? because there's an epidemic of data engineers that DO NOT know SQL which sounds crazy to me."

I was flabbergasted and while i definitely feel the market is tougher now i cant help but think that there's just a flood of people like these and the issue is less the amount of job openings but rather standing out and making HR feel like you're not gonna embarass them further down the process. Im guessing Tech Recruiters get rated and evaluated on the amount of successful hires/people that go to the end of the process so they are all the more incentivized to be cautious and prioritize resumes that will reassure them.

I’m in Boston and I’m looking to, well, earn more money. Career advancement is important to me and I want to live somewhere where I can do that fast and more easily. The tech scene here is alright, but I wonder if West Coast cities like SF or Seattle would just be better for me. Seattle is appealing because of no state income tax. I also like the geography and the nature.

Has anybody done a move like this?

I achieved my degree in computer science in May. I spent a long time searching linked in for jobs that I can apply to. I haven't found anything and work part time in a super market right now. But what type of jobs should I be looking for. I didn't do an internship in college so that limits options. however entry level positions keep asking for experience in a job field.

Point being I don't really have anyone to ask but how do I go about the job search.

sorry if this is over asked.