[veyron_head]

I do talk to a lot of CXOs in my line of work. The common theme I hear is coding as we know today will be extinct in only a few years from now. What was done by 100s of developers will be done by a small skeletal team that takes over from the say 80% code created by AI and finishes it. It doesn't actually sound far from truth to me to be honest. The kind of disruption ChatGPTs and other LLMs have created is nothing short of science fiction coming to reality.

But then this is probably true only for application developers for now. System software , firm ware, embedded IoT etc will likely need developers for some more time before AI is ready.

[Turbohead]

I am currently preparing for an AWS certification and one thing that's quite obvious is the variety of services offered for a given technology - you have options varying from building everything on your own in a rented out computer to using pre-built services. And the cost difference is big! AWS knows that convenience can be charged a premium and I'm expecting the same with AI.

I'm expecting AI to become more expensive in the coming days and will rival in prices to actual humans. It's upto companies to decide what they want to go with and their success will depend on how the market reacts to products produced by AI if the whole objective is to use the cheapest labour to produce stuff using AI.

The most positive thing I'm expecting is the improvement of the quality of work of a software engineer/any complex profession - they will get more time to spend on critical decisions and less time on mundane tasks which can be automated and sped up.

The biggest losers will be people who struggle to level up or folks with low IQ - which is scary and a cause of concern as they might indulge in illegal activities to make a living.

[PreludeSH]

Jobs will evolve based on needs. Companies need to find ways of integrating coding using AI in different types of jobs. Whether it can be end to end from requirements to testing or will aid small teams to create bigger projects easily ?

Haven't high level languages (with many modules, packages) already made coding very easy and you don't have to know the intricacies of memory, cpu, network etc. So I guess there will be work that can be done by AI and it might not take much time if companies are willing to find ways.

I use chatGPT to write code for my emulation, testing kind of work and really like it. You cannot remember everything that's little deep in terms of coding and it helps save a lot of time. The best thing I liked about is the way it adds comments That is something even most programmers don't do.

[download2live]

Golden age is indeed over.

It was nearing its end even before the arrival of AI. AWS and other cloud companies have created services which allow 95% of the companies to do their work just by getting right services connected in the right way.
90% of software engineers are now working just like configurator.

Only few niche companies like high frequency trading houses and big tech are into core software engineering now.
And they do not need so many people at all. Teams there are small and very productive.

So in all, I see a future where a lot less of software engineers needed. They will be paid well though.

I do not think I will be asking my kids to take up software as profession.

[somersault]

Coming from 24 years of hands on and startup experience. There are 2 kinds of distinct areas in the software industry.

1. Service Industry (TCS etc) - Surviving here with the existing skills is going to be very difficult as you go up the ladder. Customer is now very vigilant on the IT budget and spent. In addition to this, earlier the Job Automation and now with some sort of AI is going to add the pressure on the man power. I have seen entry level engineers being deployed to run some scripts or modify excel configs for customers. Such kind of jobs will go and must go.

2. Product Industry (startups etc) - Here you can differentiate between a funded startup and a bootstrapped one. While funded startups used to have ample capital so people were hired with very high salary. I have seen a 2 year automation tester getting hired at 40 lakhs. With funding winter, these people are getting laid offs and are finding difficult to join into any new org. For bootstrapped startups, they are very conscious about the man power cost. They are always automating, trying to reduce infrastructure costs etc. Here only top of the talent will survive.

Of course there are exceptions of the cash rich companies in both areas. But this is a general trend.
In short, you have to stay hands on to survive in this industry now, no matter what level you grow or how much experience you have.

[32100]

I believe not the AI (including generative and all), but industry maturity and financial/cost factors are playing a bigger role in India. So only a lot of service jobs are moving out of India towards other south Asian countries.
And as always, the people in the software/tech industry MUST be updated on skillset. Otherwise, like earlier days too, a newcomer will take over an older timer's job with lesser pay in the business unit.
But all these is happening for a good reason. This indirectly will help the other core and manufacturing sectors in the country.

[Mystic]

It is not the end of the world and in fact it is just the starting. My 2 cents:

1. What is the golden era? If golden era is 90s, then I was part of golden era hopping around countries as a very valuable functional business processes principal consultant in chartered planes. I had seen those days. I am a SME and my domain is Engineering and Construction and I configure the custom business processes for construction companies when they buy licenses to some of the biggest ERP ( enterprise resource planning ) applications out there. As long as this planet has industries , I will be in demand. By the way, my education background is research in structural engineering from a top Government engineering college in India which is 80 years old. I worked for a long time in construction Industry as an engineer.The alumni from our college have worked as professors to the top elite IITs which were established later. Can we create functional consultants in mass from campus without having worked in their respective domains like oil and gas, pharma, retail, utilities etc? No we cannot. We can only do campus recruitment to do coding in the proprietary language which is used in ERP under the supervision of the functional consultants to make customised solutions as per client requirement.

2. I recently attended 40 years reunion of our college and discussed the present trend of CS having multiple batches in the same academic year and all other core branches like civil, mechanical and electrical etc neglected in our college. I predicted this trend in our college days itself when I got an opportunity to conduct international conference on engineering education. Students are neglecting their core module and jumping to any job like investment banking, software development etc wasting valuable money invested by Government of India in subsidising crores of rupees in Govt colleges.

3. Now it is all about AI now disrupting the industry. I am in close touch with this trend also through my son who is one of the youngest PhD (USA) in CS-AI -NLP and one of the pioneers in that area. Being a professor in top 3 universities in the world and closely working with Industry, he says in his tweet just a few minutes ago in his academic tweeter account which is becoming viral is that there is a huge hype bubble going on now in AI space and the professors are now concentrating on long horizon AI research outside the hype bubble.

4. Coming back to the OP with a little touch of philosophy. No need to panic. The new generation of kids are super smart. They can pick up any skill super fast for survival. Whatever technology comes, they can mould themselves around it and adapt the same. I would say that golden era has not yet come and there is no need to feel sad that they have missed the bus of 90s golden era. The future is all for people who are adapting to changes in technology.

[indie_honda]

As a Delivery Manager I've seen that while AI and automation can make some tasks faster they can’t replace the valuable insights and creativity of a diverse & complete team. I've seen management use the AI frenzy to cover their bad decisions and lay off people as well. There’s been a lot of talk about AI boosting productivity by cutting down the number of engineers needed but this seems to simplify the realities of different fields.

Take software development for instance. My wife is a frontend developer who uses it for debugging complex issues (previously they relied on google). Organisations wont allow access to their code for AI to understand the entire coding for the engineers to be replaced. AI can automate repetitive coding, assist in bug fixes or testing tasks, but it can’t innovate. For mechanical or IT infrastructure AI might assist with design simulations or network monitoring, but the decision making and problem solving still require experienced professionals who understand the bigger picture better.

I recently read a powerful example (not sure if it's true since it was a social media post) of AI's potential where AI detected breast cancer years before traditional methods could.This is where AI shines, not in replacing people but in augmenting what we can do..

There’s also a different angle to consider like the famous “Chinese Room” thought experiment. It raises questions about if AI truly understands the tasks it performs or simply follows programmed instructions without any real understanding. This experiment highlights the limitations of AI suggesting that while AI can process data they dont actually “understand” it the way humans do. AI should be seen as a tool to enhance human capabilities & not replace them.

This is true across all domains where the complexity of projects often demands a diverse set of skills and a collaborative approach that AI simply cant provide.

[Entsurgeon]

Originally Posted by Mystic

My education background is research in structural engineering from a top Government engineering college in India which is 80 years old. I worked for a long time in construction Industry as an engineer.The alumni from our college have worked as professors to the top elite IITs which were established later.

By any chance, DTU ?(DCE?)

[DevendraG]

I am a part of the Software industry and I feel GenAI currently can be looked at as the Google Maps of IT. It can help you reach your destination (if you know where you want to go) and will do it good most of the times (not all). It is a time saver from coding perspective. We have used internet to search for our issues and GenAI saved us our time scrolling on multiple forums.

Coding alone is of no use if the entire working of an ecosystem is unknown to the coder. Hence we have freshers as coders and Architects to design the Product/System. This is still way ahead in future. And the world works on Software Updates, GenAI would need the same. And ask anyone in the industry on the quality of people we get as freshers. We hire them fully aware that most of them would require 6-9 months to be actually productive.

GenAI’s major utility lies in Content Creation today where a lot can be achieved via creative and proper prompts. Yet it addresses only a certain part of Content Creation and not whole.

Finally humans are too aware to create something that’ll work perpetually forever (which real AI should be) for their own good.

[Mystic]

Originally Posted by Entsurgeon

By any chance, DTU ?(DCE?)

No. Thanks for asking. I try my best to hide personal details of myself and my son on social media. Anyways, thanks for asking about my alma mater. I am retired now and it doesn't matter anymore (pun intended)

Andhra University College of Engineering, Visakhapatnam was established in 1946 even though the seeds of technological education were sown when Sugar Technology was started in the 1933. Andhra University is not just one of the oldest educational institutions in the country, but is also the first to be conceived as a residential and teaching-cum-affiliating University, mainly devoted to post-graduate teaching and research.

Read more at:

https://www.careerindia.com/colleges...radesh-cp4451/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andhra...of_Engineering

[AMG Power]

One of the drawbacks of human intellect is its inability to come to terms with the fact that there is a potential for an intelligence superior to its own and that there are limits to human intellect.

The inability to accept this fact is in itself a limitation of human intelligence.

Rational thinking, scientific proof, one’s own experience are the usual arguments in support.

Most of the statements on AI are based on its current state of evolution and what humans can conceptualise as to its potential future.

Unlike traditional AI, which relies on predefined algorithms and human crafted updates, self-evolving AI harnesses the power of evolutionary algorithms (and the usual Machine learning & deep learning) to enhance its own performance over time.

This evolution is not just about handling more data or solving more complex problems; it’s about AI’s ability to learn from new situations, environments, and challenges (as humans do) thereby becoming increasingly similar to human thinking and eventually moving ahead of humans as it evolves.

Some would say that this is conjecture.

I hope it is.

[SmartCat]

Do IT companies allow employees to use generative AI for work? Aren't they worried about secrecy of their client's software/code?

[bordeaux]

Only a few points I have on this:

• Blockchain was going to solve every problem on earth.
• Bitcoin was going to solve every problem on earth
• We will only need to own NFTs. No real life work required.

[AMG Power]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Do IT companies allow employees to use generative AI for work?

Some have restrictions, some do not. Depends on the perceived threat by the client / company and their approach towards mitigating that risk.