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Comment by abustamam | Hacker News Reader

Broadly speaking I agree. But the reality for many SWEs is that if they don't learn new AI tools they'll get let go. It's use AI or be replaced by AI (or, more accurately, be replaced by someone using Ai) for many folks.

I think it's a luxury to be able to ignore a trend like AI. crypto was fine to ignore because it didn't really replace anyone, but Ai is a different beast

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> It's use AI or be replaced by AI

I think they want to sell that perception, but the biggest thing the tech execs want in their SWEs is fear.

Fear that makes us stay in our jobs, even when raises and bonuses stagnate, because the market is scary with all the "AI layoffs" (which have largely been regular downsizing with the AI label slapped on).

Fear that makes us use the LLMs and then put in extra hours when we don't see the 10x productivity gains that they expect.

Fear that makes us erode our own skills and become dependent on these gatekeepers to maintain even a base level of productivity.

So much of the advertising and discussion around AI is based around fear. It's inevitable. It will take your job. Render you useless. It will render humanity useless. You better get in now, or you'll both lose your job and could end up in a virtual hell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk).

I think you're right that it is fear. But it's kind of a self fulfilling fear. Teams are requiring employees to use AI, probably because of this fear. Maybe it isn't directly taking my job, but it is necessary for me to use Ai to keep my job.

You can always hang your shingle and work for clients directly.

Sure, in the same way I can always quit being an engineer and become a farmer. It can work for some, but not everyone.

FWIW I do client work on the side. Full time client work has always been more draining than just having a regular job IME. Maybe I just can't find the right clients, but that's not something I have to worry about when I work for a company.

I wasn’t talking to everyone I was talking to you. And becoming a contractor is a lot more viable than becoming a farmer.

Client work is hard, but you have to decide if the freedom to work the way you want is worth it.

Oh. Well personally I don't mind using AI, and I use AI when I do client work as well (they know and some clients who use AI apps like lovable expect it).

But I know not everyone is in my shoes which is where my comment is coming from.

I agree that it's self-fulfilling. I just feel that it's being used more as a tool for compliance than for direct productivity.

That certainly could be true for some teams. Personally I think AI has directly improved my productivity. There's certainly sharp edges and we definitely shot ourselves in the foot more than a few times in ways we wouldn't have without AI, but by and large we've built an internal app where no human wrote a single line of code. I don't think we'd have been able to build it in 2 months without AI. We could have gone faster but the bottleneck was product and user testing, not code.

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