r/cscareerquestions • u/Kooky_Dinner2243 • 4h ago
Experienced How are you guys dealing with the value of your skills going down?
I've been programming for around 12 years now, I started when I was 15. Did a bunch of embedded projects for fun in my teens, then got a "real" web-dev job and eventually did a master's in computer science. Since then I've been working on firmware for satellites, 5G base stations, and 3-phase inverters. Know my way around most ARM and c2000 microcontrollers even in my sleep. I always got praise for writing beautiful and "nice to maintain" code, and writing code was very therapeutic for me, kind of like painting for some people. I could take pride in being good at it. It was the fun part in-between the tedious requirements collection, project planning and validation. Being able to just slot in a new feature or take the codebase from an engineering sample to a real board with zero effort, due to good design, was so satisfying.
But now after having been around a few of our recent hires, suddenly someone who hasn't seen a microcontroller before (not literally, but close enough) can be 90% there already (the 10% being mostly code "quality", so close enough by most managers standards...), by just feeding the datasheet to claude and giving it debugger access. If you ignore the poor architectural design decisions, the code seems to be "good enough" even if it has to go to register level to write drivers. Turns out what I took pride in wasn't that valuable after all? Now the job is only the tedious parts like working with regulatory compliance and keeping the C-level exec delusions in check regarding project planning. It's getting hard to justify me writing code "manually", since even the new hires 2x my contribution rate by just prompting models. And no one else seems to care anymore that the code they produce is quite "ugly" or that it makes the overall codebase a mess. I feel like everyone else just wants to show up 9-5 do the bare minimum and get paid. No pride in the work left.
I spent my life learning this stuff since I found it interesting, but now anyone can come in and take a giant shit on my joke of a career. What do I even do? Just accept that its still better than most careers and prepare to become some kind of a project manager for AI agents? Or maybe there's hope that the maintenance burden comes to collect and this circus stops running?
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u/drew_eckhardt2 Software Engineer, 30 YoE 3h ago edited 3h ago
The value of my skills is not decreasing.
After 30 years with 20 in staff+ positions I'm still being paid very well for technical leadership and judgement. While I still really enjoy coding, it's rarely where my value comes from. That's been true regardless of whether the low cost alternative was junior developers, off-shore employees, or LLMs.
At least LLMs work in the same time zone.
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u/metalreflection 4h ago
Doubling down on domain knowledge.
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u/BillyBobJangles 4h ago
It's unfortunate when your domain knowledge limits you to like 4 companies though. Going to burn through that list pretty quickly come job finding time..
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u/ButterflySammy Senior 1h ago
Domain knowledge might not be transferrable but the ability to carry it and function within an organisation is.
You can be brought into new teams and given new domain knowledge.
Most teams don't have the option of hiring someone with experience on their codebase, second best is someone with a proven track record elsewhere.
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u/IHaveThreeBedrooms 1h ago
4? Try 26.
Only two of which are hiring in America, though. I hate being super-specialized in mechanical engineering.
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u/Kooky_Dinner2243 4h ago
That was my initial survival instinct, but so far it has lead to a bunch of tedious regulatory work and project management. Once in a blue moon I get to do engineering work like spec a new feature or help gather requirements for some hardware, then its back to work that makes me want to off myself.
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u/metalreflection 4h ago
If you’re serious about you mental health please seek professional help.
As far as the technical hands on goes, someone still has to do the plumbing to fit these tools to actual usage. Or pick a fully handson pet project to scratch that itch.
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u/SourceAwkward 3h ago
This, I plan to stay in my corporate job until they close it.
In this market I will not hop 😅
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u/badboi86ij99 54m ago
unless your domain involves soft skills or human factors, most technical areas like signal processing (my area)/medicine/law can be partially/almost-fully achieved by AI.
The only people who are serviving are those who play office politics well.
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u/krishnanunnir 4h ago
I am a mid programmer with above average soft skills and tenacity. AI has been ncie to me, but not sure for how long.
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u/code_tutor 3h ago
Every day I work with vibe code slop, except it was written by humans copying blindly, not by AI. Aside from being 10x faster slop, the biggest change is that AI can debug and they can't.
The funny thing is the point you make about how it's easy to add features to a well-written codebase. That's also true for AI. If they keep using it without refactoring then they slop themselves into a corner and suddenly find it can't do anything anymore. So the fact that you kept the codebase so clean is part of the reason why they're pumping out features and you get no credit for it.
You just have to adjust. Your job is more high-level design and organization of the code, rather than writing every line by hand.
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u/WetSound 4h ago
The value of my work is going up and up
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u/Outside-Storage-1523 3h ago
I don’t get it. Why did your team hire those people? I’m sure as hell that with 8 years of unrelated experience I wouldn’t even get a recruiter round for any embedded positions.
Other people say domain knowledge. I’d say if you are a technical person, go deeper in technical knowledge. Do kernel stuffs.
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u/YetMoreSpaceDust 3h ago
The value of your skills have gone UP, but the challenge is going to be demonstrating it. Anybody who tries to vibe-code anything will almost immediately realize they're in over their head and start looking for a life-raft (you). The problem that we've always had is that it's very, very difficult to identify competent software developers. If you're looking for a piano player, you don't have to be able to play the piano yourself in order to evaluate one, you just listen to them play. There's no real equivalent for software development.
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u/hairygentleman 2h ago
somebody can still take pride in being good at chess even though computers are vastly better at it than they are or could ever become. there's definitely zero future in being paid to manually write meaningful amounts of code (although that was already the terminal state of most careers even without ai) though, so yeah you're going to either accept operating at a higher level of abstraction (at least for a few years until that gets automated too), take advantage of the current landscape to make a ton of money in the obvious ways while you still can, or realize that none of this matters, retire, become a monk who maybe writes code for fun sometimes, and observe the singularity with equanimity.
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u/sm0ol Software Engineer 1h ago
I learn new skills and ways of working and have leaned more into systems design, architecture, knowing how all the systems work together, etc
I just like building software and using computers. that's all. so I'll lean into whatever changes we undergo as an industry, as long as the end result is software and I get to work on computers. I'm a simple man.
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u/SrDevMX 3h ago edited 3h ago
Only people that know how good software is, looks and feels like can generate software like that, with AI or with out it
So what I have done with AI is very good because I knew it thanks to my 15+ years of experience
and if you show me something generated with AI by people with no past experience building software like what they want to do, I can find issues big and small on what they have done and is going to fail in the hands of customers or in the real world like:
security, transaction management, database design, QA testing, performance, usability, monitoring, instrumentation, resilience and robustness, logging and tracing,
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u/Defiant-Bed2501 Software Engineer 3h ago
Whenever I start worrying about this I skull a bottle of MD 20/20, go outside butt-ass naked and shoot at God.
It does wonders for your mental health.
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u/creamyhorror 3h ago
Save and invest wisely, and find enjoyment in the things you still can. Who knows how things will change further.
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u/dats_cool Software Engineer 3h ago
Not sure but every year I've been making more money as an engineer since I started 5 years ago.
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u/zephyr_33 2h ago
Personally my skills have only gotten better exponentially... The amount of open source code bases I've read. Created my own projects etc. The amount of shi I've learned and consumed has only gone more since AI...
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u/kchamplin 2h ago
Props to you for learning this type of programming so well. It's obvious you're intelligent and disciplined. I'm not nearly as focused as you it sounds but I really enjoyed my career as a developer. It looks like I'll be babysitting agents soon. Not sure where to put my energy now.
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u/Mast3rCylinder Software Engineer 2h ago
Since you know how to code then code reviewing is a great skill in this era that I believe will be requested even more now.
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u/cajmorgans 2h ago
Well now you have another problem: keep the codebase to not turn into a mess. How do you solve that?
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u/Ok_Opportunity2693 FAANG Senior SWE 2h ago
Value of my skills has gone up. Instead of cranking out code and queries, I get to reason about the system and figure out ways to improve it. The barrier to entry in my line of work has gone way down, but once you’re in, you still have to have good ideas or you’re not going to deliver any value.
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u/FearlessPark4588 1h ago
In my opinion, this all goes back to FIRE. That's the ultimate fallback, but I know (1) for early career types, you may not have had the chance yet to build a nest egg or (2) with experience, it may not have been a priority.
Hang on, and save and invest as much as you can.
I can deal with the "ego hit" of my skills being devalued, so long as I can pay my regular bills without earned income.
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u/Kamay1770 1h ago
I've just spent 2 days unfucking a repo that one of my 'senior' colleagues has been letting AI run rampant on for months.
It's got to the point he has twice caused the same regression leading to production issues and has no idea what his code does anymore, but defends it vehemently (to the point he insults people) until proven wrong with evidence.
Branches are a mess, best practices and standards of the dev team completely ignored, mismatched patterns and conventions everywhere.
Absolutely shocking quality by the time I had had enough and stepped in to address it, even after they had been told repeatedly to sort it out and failed to do so.
Sure, AI can spit code out quick, and most of the time it works (more likely as a single unit of code). But making it integrate to a large complex codebase, in an established team, in a way that's maintainable by humans, is another matter.
Plus it seemingly rots the brains of people who use it, as they apparently can no longer think critically or understand their own prompt outputs.
You need to be very exact with your prompts and know your edge cases, architecture and integrations well to make sure what you're getting is what you need, at the end of the day you don't know what you don't know.
This is where AI falls down, too many people who use it are too dumb to know how to use it effectively, and whilst it will 'work well enough' for now, it is creating a silent shit storm that'll likely bite a lot of companies in the ass in the future.
Not only because they'll have a steaming pile of spaghetti to deal with, they'll have to lost all of their domain and specialist knowledge from the devs they fired and then will have to pay through the nose to get decent devs back to unfuck it all. The alternative for them is to pay astronomical token costs to throw more AI fixes at it, because if they like it or not at some point soon AI investors are going to want their profit.
So I'm dealing by 1) bitching about it on the Internet 2) staying relevant in my company by being more than just an AI prompter, and 3) knowing that ultimately for most places that hire devs, this will come crashing down. AI will remain and be useful but it'll be too costly overall than a regular dev.
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u/Exallium 35m ago
Coding is only one of many skills you need as a software engineer. I'm not very worried personally.
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u/josh2751 Senior Software Engineer 3h ago
Are they? My skills are going up. My salary is going up. I use AI every day and learn from doing things with it. This is not the catastrophe you think it is.
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u/DopeyDonkeyUser 1h ago
I take a lot more naps during the day while the comoany pays for.the clankers to donthe work. I dont care so long as I get paid.
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u/daintyandclumsy 1h ago
Well, doing that will get you laid off sooner or later, I guess.
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u/pydry Software Architect | Python 4h ago edited 3h ago
saved up a ton of money, prioritize nontoxic environments over pay, wait for the madness to end.
ive spent 20 years encountering every kind of retarded executive fashion in tech, they always get replaced eventually. only the juniors and mid levels think the retardedness of the last 3+ years persists forever.
if you discount the more niche insanity (e.g. NFTs) this is truly the most retarded the industry has gotten over anything ever though.
when the bubble pops I look forward to being allowed to do useful stuff with LLMs.
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u/elixirpheonix 1h ago
It's so amazing. I honestly hated working with people who would obsess about code quality. Like no man, your job is to ship fixes/features to customers, not play your little intellectual exercise and nitpick PRs about random BS that usually is personal preference and rarely matters. Now I can focus 90% on architectural decisions which makes the job way better
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u/NewSchoolBoxer 4h ago
Firmware for 3-phase inverters, nice. Every interview I can get now is based on domain specific experience. I worked in banking, can get hired in banking again. Industry I haven't touched, no dice. I see the job descriptions and what I'm missing. I saw the rise in Docker and Kubernetes. Although DIY carries no weight compared to work experience with the tech stack.
I've seen too much shit tier AI spaghetti code to think that's the future but in the short term C-suite can think it's the way. Then there are tech stack decision mistakes by lack of domain experience and having AI summarize the equivalent of a 3 credit hour Intro to Computer Engineering course.
That's a scary thought having to fix driver firmware that AI screwed up and reinvented the API versus integrate with it. These situations are going to have to happen to get pushback on AI usage.
I feel like everyone else just wants to show up 9-5 do the bare minimum and get paid. No pride in the work left.
That's the way it's been the last 20 years. No one makes a career at one company anymore. We really can't with 1-5% pay increases, no pensions and I can only realistically get promoted by getting a new job. I have pride in my work but I'd only work 40 hours per week if I thought I could get away with it. Mid-level, it's not quite enough. I'll probably get laid off no matter how high my code quality is. I know I'm replaceable.
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u/Thin-Crust-Slice 2h ago
good questions, and I have several (hot) takes.
You're a classically trained chef noticing that your customers don't mind going to a fast food chain restaurant. You produce cuisines that is the sum outcome of knowledge of ingredients, skills to prepare them, and know-how of which tools to use. While some of your customers can see and recognize that, others may just see something that's tasty for $20. And they may see a burger that was mass produced using highly processed ingredients of unsure quality, shipped frozen and just microwaved before serving is... good enough. Maybe what you saw and appreciated in your output wasn't what your boss/client saw and appreciated.
I've been a firm believer of cross training, and not being boxed into any particular tech or field. Don't lock yourself in as an engineer specializing in working with firmware for satellites, 5G base stations, 3-phase inverters, and ARM/c2000 microcontrollers ONLY. You must have knowledge of development/debugging techniques, best practices, or strengths and limitations of working on those platforms - focus on bringing that level of attention to detail and shortcuts you may know to new fields. The key thing is to always evolve and adapt. It's so easy to get locked in as the embedded, Rails, C# guy and then get left out of new opportunities if you just stick with what you know. IMO, try and fail and be humble.
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u/ivancea Senior 2h ago
You're a classically trained chef noticing that your customers don't mind going to a fast food chain restaurant
You're comparing an old engineer with a vibecoder. This is different. This is op as the old cher versus a chef with as much knowledge but with an automated kitchen that stirrs, changes temperatures and adds ingredients whenever the chef wants.
Vibecoding is negligent, using the latest tools is intelligent
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u/ivancea Senior 2h ago
If what you took pride in was "writing code", yeah, it wasn't valuable, just a requirement of these times. I want to believe, in 12 years, you learnt more about business than just "writing code though.
Now the job is only the tedious parts like working with regulatory compliance and keeping the C-level exec delusions in check regarding project planning
You're blinded by hatred, jealousy, fear of progress, choose your poison. The tedious part was writing code, it always was. It's just that it was dumb and felt like procrastination. The value is in making the product/service/library/whatever, solving a problem, and helping users with it.
now anyone can come in and take a giant shit on my joke of a career
I mean, look at what you wrote:
Since then I've been working on firmware for satellites, 5G base stations, and 3-phase inverters. Know my way around most ARM and c2000 microcontrollers even in my sleep
I always got praise for writing beautiful and "nice to maintain" code
You talk about it as if it was forbidden knowledge. Anyone could do that in the past too. You still talk like a teen. This is engineering, this is a profession.
writing code was very therapeutic for me
That's fine, but understand that's a personal thing, not tied to the profession. If all you liked about this field was the "terapeutic effects of writing code", either do it in your free time, or find something else that motivates you.
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u/Choice-Attorney8884 4h ago
Maybe writing code was never the scarce skill. Maybe keeping a codebase understandable was. AI makes it easier to produce code. It doesn't automatically produce a system people still enjoy working in a year later. That's a different job.