I hear more people say "AI will replace software developers." on LinkedIn. By the fact that AI itself is actually build by software developers, most people ironically believe this. So as a software developer with 14-years experience with having B.S. in Computer Engineer; I will explain who and why they are spreading this conspiracy.
AI Isn't Something New
Here's something the hype merchants don't want you to remember: AI isn't something new. Google has been working on AI for over twenty years.
They created significant AI-powered products throughout the 2010s Google Translate, Google Photos' image recognition, Smart Reply in Gmail.
DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, was beating humans at Go by 2016. OpenAI was founded in 2015. That's a decade ago.
AI assistants have been in our pockets and homes for years. Siri launched in 2011. Google Assistant in 2016. Amazon Alexa in 2014. We've been talking to AI daily for over a decade, too.
So why the sudden panic about "devs being replaced"? While the technology has been evolving gradually; what changed isn't AI's capability, it's the narrative around it. ChatGPT (created by software developers) made AI conversational and accessible, which made it visible to more non-technical people. Non-technical people having digital product ideas can build something more than ever, either by code-generation and conversational learning with AI's.
Non-Developers Building Software Isn't New Either
Back in the 2000s it was almost impossible to create websites without any knowledge. I remember companies were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars just to have a company introduction website in those years. Then CMSs like Drupal, Joomla and WordPress (created by software developers) changed this by giving people the ability to build websites without any engineering knowledge. That didn't devalue developers. WordPress powers 40% of the web today, but developer salaries kept rising.
Then in the 2010s with Web 2.0, social networks rose and companies like Twitter and Facebook became unicorns. Everybody (including me) was trying to build the next popular social network—which required more engineering knowledge. Application platforms became the new way of distributing software to mass consumers. With platforms like Apple App Store, Google Play, and even Facebook App Platform, software engineering shined again. More people shift into Software Development as it's the most welcoming (not regulated) qualified profession as they want to build the next big thing.
The Boom and Bust Cycles
What people forgot is software development has always been cyclical, with ups and downs.
Golden-era of apps didn't last forever. Most of them failed. Only few apps survived and became conglomerates as they had enough resources for product development and advertising to establish monopolies in their markets (We all remember Snapchat vs. Instagram war, in 2017, right?). Thousands of developers who built "the next Uber for X" found themselves looking for new jobs. Demand to software developers declined again.
Then came the pandemic era. World Bank credits flowed freely. Cheap interest rates made borrowing almost free. Social funds and stimulus checks found their way into NASDAQ and NYSE. Suddenly every company needed to "go digital." Software engineering salaries skyrocketed. A fresh graduate could demand $150k and get hired. Senior engineers were getting $300k, $400k, even $500k+ packages with options at big tech companies.
Over-hiring and mismanaged capital introduced significant problems in economy such as inflation and reduced sustainability in labor. Increasing demand and salary gaps made people quit their jobs to become software developers; companies hired aggressively, not because they needed the engineers, but because they had the money and didn't want competitors to get the talent first. They're still doing same with AI-specialized software engineers, now.
The Post-Pandemic Correction
When the cheap money dried up and interest rates climbed, the correction was brutal. Mass layoffs swept through tech. Companies that hired 10,000 developers suddenly "discovered" they only needed 7,000. Software engineering went down again. Post-pandemic macro-economic decline still continues.
Then, AI enters the narrative here, not as a technological revolution, but as a convenient excuse.
AI as the Perfect Scapegoat
Think about the timing. Companies need to justify laying off thousands of workers. They need to explain to shareholders why they're cutting costs. They need a story that makes them look innovative rather than desperate.
"We're using AI to increase productivity" sounds much better than "we over-hired during the bubble and now we're correcting our mistakes."
The Salary Adjustment Game
Let's be honest about what's really happening. Companies that were paying $500k+ packages are looking for ways to pay less. "The code is being written by AI anyway" becomes a convenient argument during salary negotiations.
This isn't about AI capability. It's about leverage. When the job market is tight and layoffs are constant, employers have more negotiating power. AI becomes the justification for what is actually just salary decreasing.
Facts Don't Sell, Marketing Does
Companies by saying their ..% of their code done by AI:
wants you think that AI will replace software developers lie are the same ones building these AI tools: Copilot, Llama, Gemini. They have a vested interest in this narrative. They need you to believe AI is disruptive because:
- It justifies their massive AI infrastructure investments
- It grows their user base for AI products
- It attracts more funding and higher valuations
- It gives them leverage to negotiate lower salaries
So, when a company that sells AI tools tells you AI will replace software developers, that's not an objective analysis, that's a perfect marketing.
Disillusionment
AI-generated code seems working until it doesn't. It's trained on patterns, not principles. It can produce something that looks correct, passes basic tests, and then fails catastrophically in edge cases the AI never considered.
Who fixes that? Software developers.
Who identifies that the AI suggested a deprecated library with security vulnerabilities? Software developers.
Who realizes the AI's "solution" has O(n³) complexity and will bring down the server under real load? Software developers.
The people spreading the "AI can create software, too" narrative have never had to maintain a codebase. They've never been paged at 3 AM because the AI-generated authentication logic had a race condition. They've never had to explain to a client why the "AI-built" system lost their data.
The Bubble Will Burst
Every technology hype cycle follows the same pattern: inflated expectations, disillusionment, and then genuine productivity gains at a much smaller scale than initially promised.
While is expected that AI will make software developers more productive, "more productive" here is not the same as "replaceable."
The current decline in software engineering isn't because AI. It's because:
- The cheap money era ended
- Companies over-hired and are now correcting
- The narrative benefits those selling AI tools
- Employers want leverage to reduce compensation
When the AI bubble bursts (when companies realize AI tools are productivity enhancers, not developer replacements) the market will correct again. The demand for software developers -who actually understand systems, who can debug the AI's mistakes, who can build what AI cannot- will rise.
Conclusion
Software engineering has survived CMSs, no-code platforms, offshore outsourcing, and every other "this will replace software developers" prediction in the history. It's obvious that it will survive AI too.
The people telling you otherwise are either selling something, justifying layoffs, or have never built anything that needed to work reliably at scale.
The current downturn will end. The AI hype will normalize. And software engineering will rise again, as it always has.
The question isn't whether something will replace some people. The question is: who benefits from making you believe it will?
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