alt Hacker NewsThe problem with AI is that it works.
Think of it this way, before your company would need to hire more people if it wanted to do more. But now the same team can do things like this without hiring more:
> We migrated in 2 weeks to new versions of framework and libraries. If we have to do it without AI, then it will be work for few months or even year...
Maybe long-term this is amortized. But short-term the tendency is lower salaries and layoffs.
Long term the tendency is even lower salaries.
Right now AI still isn't autonomous enough to do all of the work itself, so it needs developers to carefully manage it to do what it must.
If things remained like this, then sure, there'd be a point when "AI-management for area X" would become a profession on its own, similar to how similar processes happened multiple times in the past, and that would result in a new balance.
But AI won't remain like that. The end-goal is that a high level executive coils type on, Claude v25 something like:
"Update all my legacy codebase to the most recent everything. Make sure it works perfectly and doesn't break compatibility with anything. Also, while you're at it, these DOCX our customers sent list new features they'd like, so implement it all while you're at it."
And come back in the morning with it all executed perfectly. Which definitely isn't a recipe for human developers to start earning any better.
Human earning ceiling will be how much it'll cost for AI to do it at the same quality and efficiency level. If you charge less than that you'll have work, but not otherwise.