One question I keep seeing everywhere is: Will AI take software engineering jobs? Based on what I’m observing, I look at it a little differently.
Before AI
Imagine a company spending billions every year on technology with thousands of engineers.
Before AI, engineers spent a large part of their day thinking through problems, searching Google, reading documentation, discussing with others, debugging and trying different solutions.
Sometimes a problem took an hour to solve. Sometimes it took much longer.
It wasn't always productive time, but that process kept us thinking. It helped us build our problem-solving ability.
Now AI Can Do It in Minutes
Today, something that took an hour can sometimes be completed in 10 minutes with AI. That's a huge productivity improvement.
So naturally, companies may think: If AI makes every engineer this productive, why would we need the same number of engineers?
That makes sense initially.But I think there is another side to it.
What Happens When We Stop Thinking?
The more we depend on AI, the less we may push ourselves to solve problems independently.
Earlier, if we didn't know something, we spent time figuring it out. Today, the first reaction is increasingly becoming: “Ask AI.”
If this continues for years, I believe there is a real possibility that we slowly lose some of our independent thinking and problem-solving ability.
AI makes us faster, but heavy dependency on AI can also make it harder for us to work without it.
*And that's where the equation becomes interesting.
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Companies May End Up Paying More, Not Less
Imagine that same company a few years later.
It introduced AI expecting thousands of engineers to become so productive that engineering costs would come down significantly.
But if engineers have also become heavily dependent on AI, the company may still need significant engineering capacity to deliver the same amount of work.
Except now there is another cost: The company is paying for the engineers + the AI.
So instead of spending billions only on engineering, companies could eventually find themselves spending similar amounts on people while also spending heavily on AI platforms, infrastructure and tools.
That is the part of the AI productivity discussion I think we are underestimating.
AI Is Powerful. But Don't Give It Your Thinking.
I use AI, and I think every software engineer should learn how to use it effectively.
But we shouldn't stop exercising our own ability to think.
Use AI to save time. Use it to learn. Use it to move faster.
Just don't reach a point where you cannot solve a problem without it.
So when someone asks me, “Will AI replace software engineers?”, I think there is another question worth asking:
Will AI make engineers so productive that companies need fewer of them, or will we become so dependent on AI that companies eventually need both the engineers and the AI?
Time will tell, But one thing I strongly believe:
Use AI to improve your thinking, not to replace it
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