Tech workers in 2026: a workforce splitting in two

13 points
1/21/1970
19 hours ago
by samspenc

Comments


paradox242

I have watched multiple times now where those most excited are the least capable. They prompt something out of an LLM and feel the thrill of vicarious creativity. They have never been able to do something like this before, and it feels good.

They show their barely working demo to management who is also excited. It kind of works if you don't look too closely, but includes features and screens no one asked for or can explain, tables and graphs which turn out to be static artifacts using made up data (in one case I saw a pie graph which when summed, exceeded 100%), is a security nightmare, and simple changes must be made across the handful of functions which are hundreds or thousands of lines long, because there is no separation of concerns.

Eventually they turn this steaming pile of "prototype" over to an engineer who is asked to get it ready to ship because "the product team was having trouble adding the few extra features, but it should be easy, just use AI".

I can't tell if this is stupidity, an elaborate joke, or maybe I am already dead and this is some kind of purgatory.

9 hours ago

sdevonoes

> Far more worry about being expected to do more for the same pay (51%), getting trapped in an unsustainable pace (46%)

This is a feature, not a bug. Not for us (engineers), but for our bosses, ofc

18 hours ago

panny

I'm watching as AI afficianados generate code and place copyright licenses on them with some amusement. It's AI generated, so copyright does not apply, nor do your licenses. If you want to argue otherwise, then you have failed to realize that work-for-hire is only automatic for human employees, not AI. So if AI generated code ever does enjoy copyright protection, it's owned by Anthropic and friends, once again, not you.

I'm not using AI agents. I'm not worried about getting left behind. I'm keeping my skills sharp while AI users let theirs dull. My code still enjoys the force of copyright, while they sit precariously between no copyright or copyright they don't own.

17 hours ago

SR2Z

I don't know where you get this idea. A human being who used AI to generate something may actually claim copyright over the product.

You might be getting confused with a court case that ruled that AI could not have sole copyright, but that case just says that only a human being can hold copyright.

28 minutes ago

sharts

Does that mean using IDE auto-completes renders your code property of VSCode, IntelliJ, etc.?

16 hours ago