I'm a senior software engineer with seven years of experience, and honestly, I feel like ChatGPT has fulminated my skills as an engineer. I started using it months ago for building basic function but now, it’s clear that my problem-solving abilities have declined rapidly in such a short time. I’ve simply become too lazy to engage deeply with my job.
I’m not worried in the sense that I still understand what’s happening in the code, but I’ve gone from being a software engineer to essentially a debugger. My days are now spent reviewing and fixing what I asked ChatGPT to generate. I have no idea if my colleagues are doing the same, I wouldn’t dare ask, but I do feel bad for juniors who won’t get the chance to develop their skills properly.
Beyond that, it has drained the excitement from the job. There’s no more dopamine rush from cracking a tough problem or designing a complex function that required pen, paper, and hours of effort to do something simple? Now, I just think about the big picture and let my virtual minions handle the rest. Before, we at least had to bother reading the documentation for the libraries we used. I wonder if we were just as stupid?
Is this evolution, or are we signing our own demise? Is this the end of second-order thinking and true critical problem-solving? Time will tell. For now, I feel more bored and unfulfilled than ever. Maybe I don’t actually want more freedom, maybe I just want to be meaningfully busy.
In the end, the goal was never just to reach the destination, it was to enjoy the path. If the journey becomes effortless, then what’s left to keep walking for?
Top comments (2)
However truth is, it is evolution.
there is no way back. People will not return to write code by hands.
So my intuition is that things will only get worse (regarding emotional value of the job)
It is just things are changing. And this profession is one that is is being affected really fast.
I totally feel the same, though my path was a little bit different. I am very good at writing and debugging code. I was (and am) teaching how to write code for many years too. Was enjoying to see people build skills and learn. talk about principles, efficiency, patterns, how to debug and place break points blah blah blah.
LLMs has totally changed my field. Everyone is generating code with AI. Last year NO one brought me code written by himself. Many don't even understand what the code does. If it works, they really don't care. And my "teaching" role has changed from teach others how to code, to fix bugs that the AI "generated" code and they do not understand. The new generation of developers will have astonishingly different set of skills.
The field changes rapidly.
The most important factor though is that i have lost an excitement of the job too and completely. It is not exciting anymore. I just don't care.
The AI's efficiency is really scary. Work that needed days can be done in a few hours and if you are good at what you do (at least I think I am) it's working too..
BUT
It wrecks my mind. It makes me feel obsolete. I have not lost my skills, but they do not matter anymore. It is just copilt yada yada shit.