Should not be a surprise for anyone that the economy is cyclical. And now we have a bubble AI Engineers and a burst in Junior APP Developer Market, how to survive the cycle?
After 25 years in the Software Development world is quite some time for us to understand that what drives jobs is the economy.
And I understand the most of the developers don’t give a damn for the market they just want to be employed and money in the pocket.
If you are more interested in why the new CPU prices have skyrocket and you can’t keep up with your new GPU requirements for running Cyberpunk in 4K, this article is not for you.
I am talking about why the Dev Market is going down and the Developers that got a layoff recently are not understanding why they can’t get a job in the same salary level.
If you are not a PHD in AI Engineering, you are feeling the consequences of the high interest rates on your pocket, or hearing a lot of complaints from your friend.
AI is not replaning developers
I am one of those employees that works for an international company that chose that or you use AI for development, or you should just look for a job elsewhere.
The mantra is AI is going to make us faster, some IDE vendor is advertising about get 10x more productive with AI helper.
There is so many fun things to do being a Vibe Coder, but let me be honest, if you are doing serious enterprise applications, the AI can help you get started or it can guide you on a wrong path.
There are many cases that it helps you get to the solution of an bug, find important information on rudge log files, or create a front end html page direct from your figma design.
But try to create a real critical backend service and you can see that it can produce so much garbage code, if you are not an experienced developer to try it out, you will see your days fighting to find a prompt that will get you out of the quicksand.
Why AI seems to be better than you?
The lack of confidence we have it’s the main cause of our impostor syndrome.
Guess what? AI does not suffer from impostos syndrome.
AI can produce the most absurd wrong results without hesitation. AI simple start guessing things when you don’t give proper prompt with well detailed description of what needs to be done and what are the boundaries it needs to follow.
It’s the lack of confidence is what is missing and needs to be addressed by the developers. The tries to emulate emotion based on what it has seem on videos, text or data on the internet.
It’s not normal that the most shy developers to express their emotions, they freeze, they don’t produce a video, or write and article on how they feel, the AI does not have much sample on that, they can only rely on sitcoms like Big Bang Theory, that try to mimic this behaviors.
If there is any code AI can copy it just produce it with confidence.
No AI is not driving Developers to Layoffs
AI is the perfect excuse for the companies to reduce their costs, and when I am talking about custos, you’re one of the most expensive employees the company has.
When we had lower interest rates, it’s was almost a crime not open your own startup, create a new APP, a SaaS our new something that will revolutionize the world with AI.
By 95% of the AI projects have failed, now that they don’t have more 0% interest rate from Japan to get more money, buy more time or hire new dev engineers, they will need to fire all their employees, there is not free money without profit anymore.
With all this developers in open to work mode, there is more experienced developers availables for the big techs.
Now they can make the excuse that AI is going to make their professionals 10x more productive so they need to get rid of their heavy cost.
But what they are trying to avoid is pay their stock options to these employees that they needed to give amazing offers to come to their endeavor.
More and more companies are more selective and with less money
They still need developers, but not any developers, startup used to inflate their staff only to justify why they need a new funding round. Most of the developers was just having fun and not really working.
Now the marked have changed, not only you can’t find the big salaries from before and now you need to be really good in what you do.
The selection process is way more complicated now, we have the only profession that you need to prove that you went and got back 10 times from the moon and survived to get a job offer.
Now you need to produce results, being a nice team member is not enough anymore.
Get away from the word EASY, programming is about practice
If you have ever been an athlete, you know that you need to get used to repetition, exhaustion, getting to your limits and only sometimes you can break your records.
Code is the same, you need to be able to get to the 10 thousand hours, there is a theory if you expend 10 thousand hours doing one thing is the only path to mastery.
The difference between being a swimmer and a software developer is, that the rules changes, they evolve, the methods needs to be always faster, and better, more scalable and etc.
Instead of practicing throwing the bol 10 thousand times, you need to study new techniques and practice them, it’s more like a chess game, you need to learn new strategies and dependent of the problem you decide to face, you will need to learn a new skill in order to move forward.
As well said in the foreword of the famous book the pragmatic programmer:
“There is an entire mindset shift that needs to happen—a change in habits, behaviors, and expectations. The process of becoming a better programmer doesn’t just happen because you know how to code; it must be met with intention and deliberate practice.”
To know one language and a framework is not enough, you need to know how things works and why you are choosing on technique or another.
This profession does not allow us to stop studying, learning, testing, practicing and evolving. And the actual market is going to push you through the limits.
It’s not going to happen overnight
If you have been not being studying for this new market, it’s never to late, but you need to make a decision.
Are you going to get rely a distinct programmer or your are going to keep spending your time playing games, watching TikTok our anything that does not make you better software developer, you are throwing your career through the toilet.
Do you have a plan what to do next, if not, find a good book and start reading.
You don’t know where to start, here goes a list:
Pragmatic Programmer, The: Your journey to mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition
The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
Working Effectively with Legacy Code
Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
System Design Interview – An insider's guide
Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
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