The 2025 Bum Thread

[CREATIVE!11]

I made a switch into IT nearly 2 years ago now, software engineer, but truth be told i'm starting to question the decision. The industry is rough and I do wonder if this will just be the norm going forward now as AI tools have a huge target painted on our backs to replace all the massively paid american devs. Anthropic etc are specifically gunning for us.

I suppose if we reach a point where AI can fully replace juniors / mid level devs and leave or just touch only seniors, I think a lot of other careers are also cooked by that point. It won't just be us code monkeys.

I'm just questioning my next steps really. I don't want to fall prey to sunk cost fallacy where I think i'm too invested to pivot. But then I also don't want to be dumb and leave a potentially well paid career path?

I also wonder whether i'd prefer an actual IT role rather than coding, because the languages tech stacks etc is a bit tiring....jobs also seem unwilling to hire outside of tech stack now, which is absurd as there are so many different things, and all of it most of the time accomplishes the same goal.

I imagine there is a lot to learn in IT, but it feels more stable to me (Say something like Networking as a random example) but I could just be talking nonsense. Also i'd have to start at the bottom again, which to be honest i'd be fine with, as long as my job is stable and relatively easy enough.

 

[malachi]

I made a switch into IT nearly 2 years ago now, software engineer, but truth be told i'm starting to question the decision. The industry is rough and I do wonder if this will just be the norm going forward now as AI tools have a huge target painted on our backs to replace all the massively paid american devs. Anthropic etc are specifically gunning for us.

I suppose if we reach a point where AI can fully replace juniors / mid level devs and leave or just touch only seniors, I think a lot of other careers are also cooked by that point. It won't just be us code monkeys.

I'm just questioning my next steps really. I don't want to fall prey to sunk cost fallacy where I think i'm too invested to pivot. But then I also don't want to be dumb and leave a potentially well paid career path?

I also wonder whether i'd prefer an actual IT role rather than coding, because the languages tech stacks etc is a bit tiring....jobs also seem unwilling to hire outside of tech stack now, which is absurd as there are so many different things, and all of it most of the time accomplishes the same goal.

I imagine there is a lot to learn in IT, but it feels more stable to me (Say something like Networking as a random example) but I could just be talking nonsense. Also i'd have to start at the bottom again, which to be honest i'd be fine with, as long as my job is stable and relatively easy enough.

Despite all the gloom and doom about "AI is going to take our jobs" when AI is still in its infancy and we are seeing the cracks already. Software Engineers are not loosing their jobs to AI, they are loosing their jobs to cheaper countries where they are being outsourced.

That's your biggest threat and current problem.

My last role we had about 10 software devs in our team. The 8 of them were in India and Poland. There are looking for more devs in those countries but not locally.

 

[CREATIVE!11]

Despite all the gloom and doom about "AI is going to take our jobs" when AI is still in its infancy and we are seeing the cracks already. Software Engineers are not loosing their jobs to AI, they are loosing their jobs to cheaper countries where they are being outsourced.

That's your biggest threat and current problem.

My last role we had about 10 software devs in our team. The 8 of them were in India and Poland. There are looking for more devs in those countries but not locally.

Yep it's a race to the bottom now, but the same I guess will be for IT, although if you deal with physical devices not so much. Hence why that may be a safer bet? Wouldn't even know where to get started to go in that direction though. Technical skills in general help to learn faster though.

 

[malachi]

Yep it's a race to the bottom now, but the same I guess will be for IT, although if you deal with physical devices not so much. Hence why that may be a safer bet? Wouldn't even know where to get started to go in that direction though. Technical skills in general help to learn faster though.

My last job, I rebuild their on prem infrastructure and move most of their resources to Azure. Kept it hybrid as the important data processing was best kept on prem servers.

They still sacked me and offloaded my work to the team in India

 

[CREATIVE!11]

My last job, I rebuild their on prem infrastructure and move most of their resources to Azure. Kept it hybrid as the important data processing was best kept on prem servers.

They still sacked me and offloaded my work to the team in India

Trades it is then, anyone know whether you can do an apprenticeship in late 30's? truth be told that idea has been rattling in my head for a very long time, financially I could do it as I'm not tied down.

 

[malachi]

Trades it is then, anyone know whether you can do an apprenticeship in late 30's? truth be told that idea has been rattling in my head for a very long time, financially I could do it as I'm not tied down.

No industry is safe to be honest, only thing you can do is keep your current skills sharp.

My friend is a self employed trades man, at the moment things are slow because all this boiler repairs are nearly done. Now he's only fitting kitchens, hoping things will pick up again.

Other friend closed this carpentry business after 15 years. People have less money to spend and the cost of materials are going up. Now he's enjoying working part time for a big company.

 

[platypus]

Trades it is then, anyone know whether you can do an apprenticeship in late 30's? truth be told that idea has been rattling in my head for a very long time, financially I could do it as I'm not tied down.

Yeah totally possible. Look at doing your C&Gs, as this will show you're serious about the switch.

Its worth considering specialising in solar/ev charger/air con fitting certs as these are only really going to increase.

 

[D.P.]

Despite all the gloom and doom about "AI is going to take our jobs" when AI is still in its infancy and we are seeing the cracks already. Software Engineers are not loosing their jobs to AI, they are loosing their jobs to cheaper countries where they are being outsourced.

That's your biggest threat and current problem.

My last role we had about 10 software devs in our team. The 8 of them were in India and Poland. There are looking for more devs in those countries but not locally.

yeah, i wouldn't worry about loosing a coding job to AI. Any software engineer has to be seen in a global market place. There are millions of very experienced Indian software engineers that are very talented and very dedicated. Most of my team is in India and most hiring going forwards will be there. The exceptions are when looking for roles like senior AI researchers, ML engineering with a proven track record in state of the art technologies. If you have a resume stacked with patents and publications you can still command $300K TC, otherwise we hire someone in india at $75k TC

 

[OspreyO]

I'm decades in IT (Jack of all trades master of none) and outsourcing has been replacing my job that entire time. Of the many of the software projects I've worked on in different organisations that were outsourced around 65% eventually came back in house. Regardless of the organisation.

I've yet to see AI have much of an impact for us other than very lite tasks on fringes.

 

[mid_gen]

Industries/fields that will be safe from AI :

Building trades
Gardening
Making (I mean hand-making things and marketing as such, not importing cheap chinese crap)
Hospitality/experiences
Food/drink

Basically, anything that isn't digital and involves people and/or things.

AI isn't going to make tech jobs disappear completely, but it is going to massively shrink the required workforce. A LOT of people are going to need new careers.

 

[Ayahuasca]

If that's the case, it's going to have a big impact on the working disabled and/or those on long-term benefits that the current government is targeting, especially when competition in those areas is going to be so much greater.

 

[NickK]

AI isn't going to make tech jobs disappear completely, but it is going to massively shrink the required workforce. A LOT of people are going to need new careers.

It's got to tie it's shoelaces first before it can run that marathon.

Been applying for roles today, hand writing the applications from scratch and not using LinkedIn jobs.

 

[mid_gen]

It's got to tie it's shoelaces first before it can run that marathon.

Been applying for roles today, hand writing the applications from scratch and not using LinkedIn jobs.

AI already saves me a significant chunk of time, makes me more productive when coding. It's already reduced the number of man hours required to get stuff done. Even just using tiny 1.5billion parameter local models.

 

[D.P.]

AI already saves me a significant chunk of time, makes me more productive when coding. It's already reduced the number of man hours required to get stuff done. Even just using tiny 1.5billion parameter local models.

AI definitely improves efficiency but this is nothing new. We went from punchcards to having code on disks, we went form amchine code to higher and higher levels of abstracted languages, we have gone form chasing down memory leaks to garbage collections, from optimising microcode to deploying at scale in the cloud, from VI to sate of the art IDEs with auto-completion and not Copilot, from looking up textbooks to searching stack-overflow to getting copilot to sketch some code. Every step of the way in the last 70 years has made software development easier, more efficient and increased velocity. While for some tasks this has reduced required resources, the result is largely that we can develop larger and more complex systems, can apply more software developers to work on a problem, and worked on more problems in parallel.
AI won't necessarily drastically reduce the need for software engineers, it could have the oposite effect. The steam engine made horses obsolete but it didn't reduce the need for a human work force.


I do see a risk for junior engineers. AI tools can make experienced senior developers do much more more and take care of some of the grunt work. A very junior engineer that is stil learning the ropes of basic coding is not really needed. We need people with better systems design, architecture, algorithms, integration experience, devops, etc.


The other big issue with AI softwarer tools is it only learns from example. They have basically absorbed sack overflow knowledge into an LLm. The LLMs are terrible at new technologies, libraries and techniques. Even simple things like debugging a code due to a bug in a dependent library, if the bug is newer than the LM trainer then it will have never learned form stack overflow input. Any new language, library or tool and the models either fail entirely or are barely above useless. This might ultimately be very bad for the industry and hold back progress

 

[D.P.]

Industries/fields that will be safe from AI :

Building trades
Gardening
Making (I mean hand-making things and marketing as such, not importing cheap chinese crap)
Hospitality/experiences
Food/drink

These jobs may well be safe from AI but they also have limited demand and supply is not restricted and there are minimal barriers to entry. I don't see any of these as actually that useful in protecting yourself. Art might be separate but hard to foresee value, and you would need talent.

Basically, anything that isn't digital and involves people and/or things.

AI isn't going to make tech jobs disappear completely, but it is going to massively shrink the required workforce. A LOT of people are going to need new careers.

AI will firstly attack jobs based on knowledge, or specialized analysis of e.g. x-rays/radiography. Lawyers would be prime candidates but i suspect they will enforce a moat. Basic call staff will no longer be someone in India but a chat bot (already Happening at high speed).


Software engineering is actually relatively safe because it is not knowledge based but problem solving complex systems with many interactions, and the development process itself is heavily based on collaborations between stakeholders.

Probably the safest career is prostitute as I suspect there will always be demand for sex with a human.

 

[NickK]

Just seen a Global Head of IT and Cybersecurity that has vSphere, Websphere and VoIP.. oddly I'm going to avoid that one.. being the CISO and having end-of-life websphere is in the same sentence is a recipe for disaster. First action would be use AI to re-engineer the web sphere onto a modern technology..

 

[OspreyO]

These jobs may well be safe from AI but they also have limited demand and supply is not restricted and there are minimal barriers to entry. I don't see any of these as actually that useful in protecting yourself. Art might be separate but hard to foresee value, and you would need talent.

AI will firstly attack jobs based on knowledge, or specialized analysis of e.g. x-rays/radiography. Lawyers would be prime candidates but i suspect they will enforce a moat. Basic call staff will no longer be someone in India but a chat bot (already Happening at high speed).

Software engineering is actually relatively safe because it is not knowledge based but problem solving complex systems with many interactions, and the development process itself is heavily based on collaborations between stakeholders.

Probably the safest career is prostitute as I suspect there will always be demand for sex with a human.

I don't understand your opinion on trades and physical jobs, AI can't do any of them, and there is always great demand. Even when (for example) the building industry crashes, tanks home maintenance, is always ongoing.
Art and creative industries are already swamped with AI. Most of it terrible. But then most creative industries are utterly undervalued and its impossible to make a living in the majority of them.
Seeing a lot of AI in software engineering. Its all around the fringes, no code solutions, nibbling all around the edges of it, and people using it to do donkey code.
Won't replace the high end, but you can't get to the high end career wise if theres no low end as a stepping stone. That has long been an issue in IT and its going to get worse.

 

[OspreyO]

I know looking at my own organization, my work mostly involves joining the dots where there there are no dots. There is often nothing to feed an AI model, and what is there is garbage and contradictory. I can't see how AI model can find its way through that.

 

[Throrik]

AI already saves me a significant chunk of time, makes me more productive when coding.

It's always strange to here people say this to me, because I see the complete opposite, but I don't know what context most people use it. But people obviously have success, so maybe I need to temper my expectations with what I use it for, which isn't the super popular stuff like Javascript/Python/Typscript/Node etc.

I'm primarily in automation, Ansible, Terraform, Bash and at home for home-projects sh and C. Terraform isn't too bad in LLMs but the rest is absolute gash. I find they give badly structured, out of date code running with parameters which don't exist, I damn near got into an argument with one as it started making up parameters even after I spelled out which were available. I'd dread to think of the Javascript/Pyhton code they provide considering how much bad code for those is on the web to be scraped.

I did end up asking Claude where the hell it was getting it's info, because it didn't have a clue

The more I try to use them, and see other people try to use them the more suspect I get of the claims of big companies pushing their agenda. I'll be kept in a job fixing AI slop if nothing else.

 

[D.P.]

I don't understand your opinion on trades and physical jobs, AI can't do any of them, and there is always great demand. Even when (for example) the building industry crashes, tanks home maintenance, is always ongoing.

There is a high level of demand compared to supply today, but supply is easily increased and demand wont increase at the same rate. In fact some would be highly dependent on the economy. Maybe people will eat out less, and not pay for gardeners or house upgrades.

Art and creative industries are already swamped with AI. Most of it terrible.

You answered yourself here. AI art is terrible, and people will always value human art over AI just like they value real diamonds over manmade even when the latter are superior.

But then most creative industries are utterly undervalued and its impossible to make a living in the majority of them.

I think art valuation is always highly variable. Of course, impossible gor most to make a living as you say.

Seeing a lot of AI in software engineering. Its all around the fringes, no code solutions, nibbling all around the edges of it, and people using it to do donkey code.
Won't replace the high end, but you can't get to the high end career wise if theres no low end as a stepping stone. That has long been an issue in IT and its going to get worse.

As i said, AI in software will only be another efficiency improvement, a tool that helps developers create more complex software.