It won't be a student on $10 replacing him. Who would hire an inexperienced student when there are piles of displaced experienced devs looking for work? One of them and a couple of AI licences could try to replace several people the way things are going.

At least until the investment capital starts to be called in and use of decent AI models becomes noticeable more expensive, assuming that happens long before open free models are good enough to replace them.

Of course that will lead to there being very few experienced people in a couple of decades, as most of the remaining ones age out, but I'll be long done by the time that becomes a big problem, I'm not on the right side of the mid-life divide!

> I’m so happy I quit tech a year ago.

What do you do now? I'm also looking to get out of this industry, but it's tough to voluntarily give up the pay.

Might as well stick around until the option is no longer there, as long as they enjoy it.

Feels like AI is just exposing what was always glorified software-configuration

Did you retire or do something else?

> next time op comes up for air is when he finds out their employer replaced them with a college student making $10/hour.

I mean numerous firms seem to already be doing this, and they're making HN's front page regularly for week-long downtimes, blog posts tearing them apart for shockingly shit engineering practices, and their userbase in open rebellion from the sheer STATE of the product.

My employer has absolutely no interest in cutting any engineering staff in favor of AI. But we're also not a VC-funded human misery mill, and we have a sustainable business model involving selling actual products, so these facts may be related to that.