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Ask HN: Are you afraid of AI making you unemployable within the next few years?

14 points johnwheeler | 7 comments | 20 Dec 25 21:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.55s | source | bottom

On Hacker News and Twitter, the consensus view is that no one is afraid. People concede that junior engineers and grad students might be the most affected. But, they still seem to hold on to their situations as being sustainable. My question is, is this just a part of wishful thinking and human nature, trying to combat the inevitable? The reason I ask is because I seriously don't see a future where there's a bunch of programmers anymore. I see mass unemployment for programmers. People are in denial, and all of these claims that the AI can't write code without making mistakes are no longer valid once an AI is released potentially overnight, that writes flawless code. Claude 4.5 is a good example. I just really don't see any valid arguments that the technology is not going to get to a point where it makes the job irrelevant, not irrelevant, but completely changes the economics.
1. wrxd ◴[20 Dec 25 22:31 UTC] No.46340263[source]▶
As much as I would like my job to be exclusively about writing code, the reality is that the majority of it is:

- talking to people to understand how to leverage their platform and to get them to build what I need

- work in closed source codebases. I know where the traps and the foot guns are. Claude doesn’t

- telling people no, that’s a bad idea. Don’t do that. This is often more useful than an you’re absolutely right followed by the perfect solution to the wrong problem

In short, I can think and I can learn. LLMs can’t.

replies(2): >>46340405 #>>46340507 #
2. Oras ◴[20 Dec 25 22:51 UTC] No.46340405[source]▶
Well, with things like skills and proper memory, these things can become better. Remember 2 years ago when AI coding wasn’t even a thing?

You’re right it wouldn’t replace everyone, but businesses will need less people to maintain.

replies(1): >>46340514 #
3. SonOfKyuss ◴[20 Dec 25 23:01 UTC] No.46340507[source]▶
> telling people no, that’s a bad idea. Don’t do that. This is often more useful than an you’re absolutely right followed by the perfect solution to the wrong problem

This one is huge. I’ve personally witnessed many situations where a multi-million dollar mistake was avoided by a domain expert shutting down a bad idea. Good leadership recognizes this value. Bad leadership just looks at how much code you ship

replies(1): >>46340582 #
4. johnwheeler ◴[20 Dec 25 23:02 UTC] No.46340514[source]▶
right, I think in the near term, the worry isn't about replacing people wholesale but just replacing most or more people and causing serious economic disruption. In the limit, you would have a CEO who commands the AI to do everything, but that seems less plausible
replies(1): >>46341277 #
5. Oras ◴[20 Dec 25 23:12 UTC] No.46340582[source]▶
If some people are going to do whatever they want regardless, then it doesn’t matter if advise is coming from human expert or AI
6. kasey_junk ◴[21 Dec 25 01:06 UTC] No.46341277{3}[source]▶
What’s the CEO for in that case?
replies(1): >>46342871 #
7. johnwheeler ◴[21 Dec 25 07:08 UTC] No.46342871{4}[source]▶
Exactly. You can keep pushing it up the chain to the Investor. Then Sam Altman I guess.