Go back to school for what? In the last few decades, schooling has been one of two things.
The first is certification for high-growth jobs that exist as short-term accidents of history and policy-making. Think of the droves of people doing rote medical billing and coding, mostly as an artifact of the current state of the US healthcare system. Or think of an over-saturated nursing specialization.
The second role of education has been the lowest rung on the ladder to join a prestige profession, like medicine or architecture. It takes a significant chunk of your lifetime, and there are ingrained cultural expectations around the age at which you do it and what your future prospects look like.
A lot of people who fantasize about a midlife pivot have no personal history with any other profession, and mostly seem to aim for occupations that are easy to describe and get saturated easily.
Many engineers with a long career have probably thought about becoming a manager at one point. A large portion of them decided to stay in the IC (individual contributor) track because they did not like some of the aspects of being a manager. Some decided to stick to the IC role because they liked creating code.
With AI, every engineer will need to become a manager to manager one or more AI assistants who do a lot of the work. The good news is that this will not involve dealing with performance reviews, psychological problems, and raises. You will also remain close to the code.
Look at the manager role again, and see which parts of it will be needed to manage AI agents. Learn those parts from standard management books. You will kind of pivot, but still remain close to the code.
On the other hand, if all you enjoyed is typing in code, but hated working with product people to understand the intent, doing code reviews, or building software that is easy to QA, there will be fewer and fewer such jobs.
I'm finding that people skills are more important than managing AI currently. Both people and agents will build 10 versions of the same product if you let them.
Communication is key, and it always has been.
I'm moving more to management after 13 years of IC work and being lead for the last year. We are all in on AI for everything at my company, and that's not just lip service.
I'm 43 and I've been thinking I might just retire if I get laid off and can't find something new. I'm frugal and have enough saved up that I could make it work if I leave my high cost of living area.
I'm not worried about engineering jobs being eliminated. I'm more worried that companies are going to expect insane velocity because of these tools and I'm not going to be able to keep up in part because I care about quality. At my company, the people that use AI to generate the most code seem to get the most recognition.
I'm in my early 20s. Many people here have much shorter time horizons to me.
Well... my timescale is 20 years. Many people reading this now are older than I will be in 20 years. So how will things look in 2046?
Can't say, but I find it worth thinking about.
To me it seems like the sentiment has already shifted among developers on what the scope of change we'll see with AI will be. It seems like at any point in time there's a lot of skepticism that it will ever be able to get over whatever the current big limitation right now is. But when thinking of careers they don't play out over 5 years or even 10 but 20 30 or more years.
At 40+ , especially if you have kids and other responsibilities, just going back t school is really, really hard. I may also say, impossible. I tried to learn German a few years ago. My brain does not work the same way, as when I was before 36.
I read it in a report, and I wrote it here in HN many times in the last few weeks:
AI amplifies... It amplifies the success of the good professionals, and it amplifies the failure of the bad ones.
Good professionals are needed so that AI is used the proper way. I think that the way we do our job will change, but there will also be place for developers, PMs, POs, Team leaders, etc.
I'm in my 40s too. I haven't switched roles in ~4 years, and probably won't for the next ~4, 5 years. But I have always painted and drawn as hobby. Seriously considering trying that for a short time during a sabbatical or -- more likely -- find a job as contractor from Mon to Wed, and spend the rest of the time drawing and painting.
If you are concerned about employability then I think going back to school or investing in a masters or some technical courses could be interesting. Or even moving to coordination/leader/engineer roles?
But if you have a hobby, maybe you could consider trying something different like either doing it in parallel, or maybe combining with engineering. e.g. I'm considering something like Blender3D + drawing using Grease pencil. Blender can be programmed with Python too, and this way I'd combine two things that I like.
I’ve been thinking about it for 20 years. I still don’t know what else I want to do. Until I have something pulling me away, it seems prudent to stay where I’m at. Running away from what I have toward nothing seems like a recipe for a bad time. If my hand is forced, that’s another story.
No, I'm not considering a career change. But my career will change.
I started off as a javacript developer. Then I was a full stack SWE. Then I was an Applied AI Engineer. I think enterprises will have a need for folks with technical expertise to deliver value - often new software - for a long time.
Until an enterprise like capital one can operate without anyone in the organization knowing how any of their technical infrastructure works (never?) I expect I'll be able to find work.
Office job workers of many types have asked if I fear the impact 'AI' will have on my dev job. For as long as they remain employed I'm not worried at all.
In fact, during the push for workers of other jobs to get closer to dev, through vibe coding for example, it may be realized that there are workers who aren't good at their jobs and it's dev that's been filling in the gaps all along.
If you've been an Engineer long enough you should look into your States professional Engineering license requirements and start studying.
There will always be a demand for licensed Professional Engineers, the folks who can sign on the dotted line certifying something won't collapse and kill someone.
Nope. Software was my second career - I was a high performing sales person before software. Sales was fun, and I liked it, but it was a lot of work to stay in that Top 10%.
I would have no problem leaving if something better came around, and I have no problem adapting if I need to, I just believe that there is going to be a MASSIVE increase in demand for high performing software professionals with experience... we just aren't seeing it right now because of the business cycle.
>I just believe that there is going to be a MASSIVE increase in demand for high performing software professionals with experience... we just aren't seeing it right now because of the business cycle.
I'm pretty concerned for early career developers. The industry is failing them by 1) Allowing the early career devs to outsource their critical thinking to AI and 2) Actively hiring fewer early career devs because they're extracting more work from their existing develops with AI. They're failing themselves by relying too much on AI, and not developing those important long-term skills and intuitions.
For that reason I feel pretty safe in my (admittedly niche) career space, and have a similar prediction that in 5-10 years we will have created a experience gap that we can't fix. Experienced engineers with good troubleshooting and debug skills will be even more valuable.
Hi! Also in my 40s, 20+ years of experience. I took the coding career because I like solving problems with code. I use agents for one-shot tasks, quickly understand big code bases, finding what I need in messy documentation, have a test suite foundation (things which I always didn't like much). I will continue this way for now because, honestly, if my job has to become reviewing tons of code vomited by an AI the whole day, I'd rather become a bar tender. I won't jump the panic train now just because everyone is obsessed with coding agents. Wait a couple of years, see what will actually remain out of this bubble and then see if and how to pivot, now it's not the time. Indeed if you have interests and budget, do go back to school and reinvent yourself, but that should be a decision independent from the current AI hype.
Go back to school for what? In the last few decades, schooling has been one of two things.
The first is certification for high-growth jobs that exist as short-term accidents of history and policy-making. Think of the droves of people doing rote medical billing and coding, mostly as an artifact of the current state of the US healthcare system. Or think of an over-saturated nursing specialization.
The second role of education has been the lowest rung on the ladder to join a prestige profession, like medicine or architecture. It takes a significant chunk of your lifetime, and there are ingrained cultural expectations around the age at which you do it and what your future prospects look like.
A lot of people who fantasize about a midlife pivot have no personal history with any other profession, and mostly seem to aim for occupations that are easy to describe and get saturated easily.
Many engineers with a long career have probably thought about becoming a manager at one point. A large portion of them decided to stay in the IC (individual contributor) track because they did not like some of the aspects of being a manager. Some decided to stick to the IC role because they liked creating code.
With AI, every engineer will need to become a manager to manager one or more AI assistants who do a lot of the work. The good news is that this will not involve dealing with performance reviews, psychological problems, and raises. You will also remain close to the code.
Look at the manager role again, and see which parts of it will be needed to manage AI agents. Learn those parts from standard management books. You will kind of pivot, but still remain close to the code.
On the other hand, if all you enjoyed is typing in code, but hated working with product people to understand the intent, doing code reviews, or building software that is easy to QA, there will be fewer and fewer such jobs.
I'm finding that people skills are more important than managing AI currently. Both people and agents will build 10 versions of the same product if you let them.
Communication is key, and it always has been.
I'm moving more to management after 13 years of IC work and being lead for the last year. We are all in on AI for everything at my company, and that's not just lip service.
Go back to school for what though?
I'm 43 and I've been thinking I might just retire if I get laid off and can't find something new. I'm frugal and have enough saved up that I could make it work if I leave my high cost of living area.
I'm not worried about engineering jobs being eliminated. I'm more worried that companies are going to expect insane velocity because of these tools and I'm not going to be able to keep up in part because I care about quality. At my company, the people that use AI to generate the most code seem to get the most recognition.
I'm in my early 20s. Many people here have much shorter time horizons to me.
Well... my timescale is 20 years. Many people reading this now are older than I will be in 20 years. So how will things look in 2046?
Can't say, but I find it worth thinking about.
To me it seems like the sentiment has already shifted among developers on what the scope of change we'll see with AI will be. It seems like at any point in time there's a lot of skepticism that it will ever be able to get over whatever the current big limitation right now is. But when thinking of careers they don't play out over 5 years or even 10 but 20 30 or more years.
At 40+ , especially if you have kids and other responsibilities, just going back t school is really, really hard. I may also say, impossible. I tried to learn German a few years ago. My brain does not work the same way, as when I was before 36.
I read it in a report, and I wrote it here in HN many times in the last few weeks: AI amplifies... It amplifies the success of the good professionals, and it amplifies the failure of the bad ones.
Good professionals are needed so that AI is used the proper way. I think that the way we do our job will change, but there will also be place for developers, PMs, POs, Team leaders, etc.
I'm in my 40s too. I haven't switched roles in ~4 years, and probably won't for the next ~4, 5 years. But I have always painted and drawn as hobby. Seriously considering trying that for a short time during a sabbatical or -- more likely -- find a job as contractor from Mon to Wed, and spend the rest of the time drawing and painting.
If you are concerned about employability then I think going back to school or investing in a masters or some technical courses could be interesting. Or even moving to coordination/leader/engineer roles?
But if you have a hobby, maybe you could consider trying something different like either doing it in parallel, or maybe combining with engineering. e.g. I'm considering something like Blender3D + drawing using Grease pencil. Blender can be programmed with Python too, and this way I'd combine two things that I like.
I’ve been thinking about it for 20 years. I still don’t know what else I want to do. Until I have something pulling me away, it seems prudent to stay where I’m at. Running away from what I have toward nothing seems like a recipe for a bad time. If my hand is forced, that’s another story.
No, I'm not considering a career change. But my career will change.
I started off as a javacript developer. Then I was a full stack SWE. Then I was an Applied AI Engineer. I think enterprises will have a need for folks with technical expertise to deliver value - often new software - for a long time.
Until an enterprise like capital one can operate without anyone in the organization knowing how any of their technical infrastructure works (never?) I expect I'll be able to find work.
Office job workers of many types have asked if I fear the impact 'AI' will have on my dev job. For as long as they remain employed I'm not worried at all.
In fact, during the push for workers of other jobs to get closer to dev, through vibe coding for example, it may be realized that there are workers who aren't good at their jobs and it's dev that's been filling in the gaps all along.
If you've been an Engineer long enough you should look into your States professional Engineering license requirements and start studying.
There will always be a demand for licensed Professional Engineers, the folks who can sign on the dotted line certifying something won't collapse and kill someone.
Nope. Software was my second career - I was a high performing sales person before software. Sales was fun, and I liked it, but it was a lot of work to stay in that Top 10%.
I would have no problem leaving if something better came around, and I have no problem adapting if I need to, I just believe that there is going to be a MASSIVE increase in demand for high performing software professionals with experience... we just aren't seeing it right now because of the business cycle.
>I just believe that there is going to be a MASSIVE increase in demand for high performing software professionals with experience... we just aren't seeing it right now because of the business cycle.
I'm pretty concerned for early career developers. The industry is failing them by 1) Allowing the early career devs to outsource their critical thinking to AI and 2) Actively hiring fewer early career devs because they're extracting more work from their existing develops with AI. They're failing themselves by relying too much on AI, and not developing those important long-term skills and intuitions.
For that reason I feel pretty safe in my (admittedly niche) career space, and have a similar prediction that in 5-10 years we will have created a experience gap that we can't fix. Experienced engineers with good troubleshooting and debug skills will be even more valuable.
Hi! Also in my 40s, 20+ years of experience. I took the coding career because I like solving problems with code. I use agents for one-shot tasks, quickly understand big code bases, finding what I need in messy documentation, have a test suite foundation (things which I always didn't like much). I will continue this way for now because, honestly, if my job has to become reviewing tons of code vomited by an AI the whole day, I'd rather become a bar tender. I won't jump the panic train now just because everyone is obsessed with coding agents. Wait a couple of years, see what will actually remain out of this bubble and then see if and how to pivot, now it's not the time. Indeed if you have interests and budget, do go back to school and reinvent yourself, but that should be a decision independent from the current AI hype.