Impact on the job market
It is 100% percent certain at this point that AI will impact the job market, in terms of wages, the opening of positions previously not existent, and removing opportunities of old jobs by automation. One concern with the emerging tools is the adoption part. We can have AI that can do everything, but how long until upper levels of company management will trust it to make decisions that affect the company's future? Hard to tell.
Two ways of thinking
As new versions of GPT have come along, people are divided into two main schools of thought. One group agrees that GPT will replace some mundane tasks and will make the developer journey easier. Another group thinks we are doomed to be replaced in a couple of years. To understand the danger of AI and its impact on software developer jobs, let's list a skillset of a good software developer.
Technical skills
- Software Design
- Coding & Programming
- Testing & Debugging
- Writing documentation
- Collaboration & Communication
Soft skills
- Problem-Solving
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Collaboration
- Problem articulation
AI will serve as our tool
In this phase of AI development, it is still in its infancy. Although certain AI models can do some specific tasks very well, they will not replace us in the foreseeable future. For example, GPT-4 helps us in writing templates, boilerplate code, tests for some functionality, etc. I watched a video of the guy commenting on AI changes in recent years that impact software development and his take was that development space had something similar in the past: "Low code/No code" platforms. With these kinds of platforms, you could build a functioning app without any technical knowledge. These kinds of platforms have their use but as you can see they did not affect the job market significantly. It would not be fair to compare low code/no code solutions with large AI models in terms of their impact.
Ai will take our jobs
If we assume that AI models will grow linearly in the next years, it is fair to say that they will be capable of handling almost all aspects of software development. That assumption would be wrong since AI and the toolset around developing large-scale models are improving by the order of magnitude every year. When something gains media attention it means it also gets more interest from investors. More investors, more money, better infrastructure, faster improvement, you get the trend.
Your skillset - broaden it
Let me make my point now. Regardless of the area of software development you are involved with, you developed a skillset. The list above divides it into technical/non-technical. It is ( and will be ) easier for AI to replace people who are specialized in doing one thing very well than somebody with a broad specter of skills. Look at AI as a partner and a potential colleague.
Don't think about AI replacing you, think about what can you do that nobody can replace.
The major chunk of software developers don't give too much attention to soft skills, and with the AI revolution that we are undergoing, I think it will be more valuable than ever.
Let me put it this way: Do you think that a person with the skills that I listed above will have a problem finding a job in the future market? If you think so, you don't fully understand how hard is to be at least slightly above average in all listed categories.
Conclusion
AI has come, and it will impact every part of life including software development. What we can do is adjust our skillset according to it. One of the best friends of growth is competition because it forces us to improve ourselves to be relevant. When a
company gets competition in the market it is forced to improve its product to stay relevant. If AI becomes our competitor at one point in the job market, we will need to improve our product. Our product is our skillset and what we can provide to our company and our society.
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