Every weekday, Matt, a software engineer, looks forward to his four-hour train commute to Pawling, New York. It’s time he uses to work on his own project: a browser-based video game for which he writes every line of code himself.
“I am actively trying to keep my axe sharp,” said Matt, who did not want to use his actual name, to protect his employment. In the last six months, Matt’s job has increasingly shifted away from coding, problem solving and software architecture towards reviewing code generated by artificial intelligence. Convinced that the shift will weaken his skills, he’s doing what he can to keep them intact. “I am trying not to leverage AI where I can.”
His career as a software engineer, which typically has paid more than $200,000 annually, used to feel like a sure thing. But after a layoff last summer and a warning from his current boss to use AI more, he said his future feels dark.
For a generation of workers like Matt, software engineering promised stability, security and upward mobility. But as AI changes how software is developed – Google says 75% of its code is now written by AI – it’s altering the profession much faster than the rank-and-file anticipated. Software engineers are frustrated, anxious and trying to adapt to a startling new reality in which the value of their skills is unclear. As a result, they’re doubling down on fundamentals, chasing new skills to stay relevant, seeking collective action to push for better protections or even contemplating exiting the industry entirely, according to more than a dozen software engineers who spoke to the Guardian.
Software engineering was one of the biggest and best-paying professions in the US in 2022, with 1.5 million practitioners earning twice the national median salary, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pay had risen amid escalating talent wars, during which companies offered bonuses of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to snag and retain top programmers. Last year, nearly 50 million people worldwide worked as developers, according to market research firm SlashData.
But since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, more than 600,000 US tech workers have lost their jobs, according to tech layoff tracker Layoff.fyi. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for computer science graduates rose to 7% in 2024, up from 6.1% the previous year, and their underemployment rate was more than 19%, data from the New York Fed shows. US tech job postings on Indeed also dropped 36% from 2020 to 2025.
Experts are unsure what’s next for software engineers, but they agree on one thing: coding skills may be losing value, but the ability to evaluate AI-written code is becoming more important.
“It’s hard to say what exactly the profession will look like in two years, but…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
