[DennisP]

I enjoy solving interesting problems in software. But when I was doing it for a living, the majority of my work was pretty tedious. I'd have been thrilled to turn over that part to AI and spend all my time doing the interesting stuff.

[bluefirebrand]

This is a fools errand

We are paid to do the tedious stuff because it is tedious. If we actually ever succeed in automating away the tedious stuff, we're out of work

[sph]

Don’t you get it? Machine do the tedious work, all we get to do now is the fun part and we can just relax the rest of the day.

I am producing 5x as before, my boss is paying me the same salary just for two hours of actual work per day. I have so much more time to pursue my passions.

Isn’t the future great?

[DennisP]

I'm surprised you've had three replies so far that didn't notice your sarcasm.

But we've been automating the tedious work since the 1950s. There were probably devs back then complaining about imminent job loss when the first compilers were invented. Maybe some jobs were lost, temporarily, but ultimately we all got more ambitious about what software we could make. We ended up hiring more programmers and paying them better, because each one provided so much more value.

When the machines are able to do the hard stuff better than humans, that's when we'll really be in trouble.

[sph]

I do not believe that past performance is a guarantee of future results. The era of well paid programmers in great demand is pretty much over, and it’s not only because of AI. Even if machines are dumb enough they require supervision, the big bosses do not care and will always prefer the dumb machine if it saves them money vs hiring a junior dev. It means the poor sods that supervise these machines will have to work harder to keep up with demand.

[DennisP]

Maybe that'll happen one day, but it hasn't so far. As of this month, Glassdoor reports the median total pay for software developers across all industries and experience levels as $149K.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-...

[paulryanrogers]

That doesn't yet capture the shrinking of the market, especially for juniors.

[j3k3]

Why do you make such statements with confidence and bluster?

[satvikpendem]

This but unironically. We're at a point where there is still a gap between what managers expect and how fast AI can work. I genuinely do have days where I finish a few tickets and I'm done.

[bluefirebrand]

> I am producing 5x as before, my boss is paying me the same salary just for two hours of actual work per day

I don't believe any of this

[Ygg2]

> I am producing 5x as before, my boss is paying me the same salary just for two hours of actual work per day.

Great. Once your boss notices your actual work has decreased, he'll adjust compensation, increase workload, or both.

[apsurd]

You forgot the /s at the end.

Can't imagine you really think "the market forces" all point toward a utopia for the workers? We're all just gonna get paid for 2 hours of work a day and post pics from the beach with a special shout-out to Claude?

[DennisP]

There definitely is economic value in solving the more challenging problems. Junior devs who can only do the tedious parts have lower salaries.

[bluefirebrand]

There are way fewer challenging problems that people are willing to pay me to solve.

Sure I would love to be working on some cutting edge challenging stuff, but the reality is it has been much more realistic to do the tedious stuff for pay instead

[kjkjadksj]

You think people are still getting senior level comp when the job is prompting llm? Ha!