to the developer afraid of Claude 3.7

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.” - Steve Jobs

We live in interesting times. 

Software development as we know it is about 50 years old. 

Modern medicine is 200-300 years old. Same as Civil Engineering, around 250 years (but we were building pyramids 5000 years ago).

But when one reads the headlines... Software engineers are about to go extinct!

One say is AI. Other say is the layoffs. Or the economy as a whole! Who knows... It doesn't matter. The software party is indeed over! Check out plumbing they say.

Worse, the hardest hit as always are the most vulnerable.

Junior and Mid-level devs are being told there’s no need for them anymore. 

Claude and Cursor is all you need! 

At the same time, the programming community is very polarized. 

On one side, there are the people claiming AI is the future of writing code… "Human programmers are the past. Look at how much code AI can write!"

On the other the ones who claim the opposite. 

The non-believers.

"LLMs as we know it are a dead end. They can code, sure. But they cannot program. They cannot really think… No matter what the companies behind them claim." 

I am not going to debunk any of these claims. 

Bogdan and I have already been doing this on your YouTube channel. 

What I wanted to point out is that, in my experience, most of the people claiming software development it’s on its way out… Are not professional software engineers! 

Is either very Junior devs scared of how Chat GPT being so fast at coding their apps.

Or “solo entrepreneurs”... Also called "SAAS founders" from non-technical backgrounds who claim to use AI to build things 10s faster. 

Little they know software engineering was never short on code quantity!

It was short on quality. 

That's why all the buzz around design patterns and clean code!

In the meantime, the job market is supposedly screwed and it will stay that way. Don’t worry about AI taking your job… Your job doesn’t even exist anymore!

The tech lords up in Silicon Valley towers decided the problem was you, the developer. 

Well, that's a sad picture to wake up to. 

I say picture because these scenarios are very far from reality. 

Yes, the market might be a bit more competitive… But guess what… Almost everyone is having a hard time! 

Accountants, human resources… even marketing people!

We are not in a tech recession. We are in a down-cycle. We’ve been in it for about 2 years. And guess what… The tide will be turning soon. 

Not because our politicians and business leader will do something about it. They are too busy screaming at each other!

But because the tide is the tide.

It always changes. Comes and goes. 

So my friends, the best advice I can give you today is to chill out a bit :) Life’s good and only getting better.

And if you are on the job hunt… Keep your head up.

Track your numbers (most developers don’t).

 Write down one single thing you want to improve after each interview. Go fix it. Never stop applying no matter how bad you feel. Yes, rejection sucks. Use it as motivation.

Whether you are employed or not… 

Keep improving your skills. 

Regarding technical stuff, nothing beats “the Fundamentals”. Get to know the tools you work with on a daily basis like the back of your hand!

Finally, take a break from time to time.

Life is not the internet. 

Is not bytes. Not pixels on a screen. 

Life is life. Is pretty short… And sometimes funny. So go outside, fill your lungs with some fresh air, and remember…

You are alive :)

Happy weekend boyz and girlz,

Dragos

P.S. Can anyone tell this dude we can find him an 120 ks+ job for a lot less than 10ks? Hope you find him :) If that's you, let's chat here. Stay cool!

P.S. See below: HR, marketing and accounting are also struggling.

You are not alone. Just that software development was one of the biggest balloons to inflate... And deflate shortly after.

Is the economy. And it will get better... Soon... Hope to see you on the other side of the graph :) 

(level of job postings on Indeed.con in the USA). 

Link: https://data.indeed.com/#/postings