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Ask HN: Trying to be strategic about my career as a junior, any advice?

1 pointsjuvvel3y ago4 comments

Hi, long time lurker and first time poster here,

just a little bit of backstory: I'm coming back to the job market after a longer hiatus (for health reasons). I'm late-20s and currently feeling anxious about the future viability of tech as a career, especially with AI on the rise. Most senior devs seem to be fairly unfazed and confident in their skills. However, with only around 4 years of experience in web development (which is considered to be the "easiest" CS field), I'm worried about the next best career move.

With the advent of AI tools, I believe many companies will be very eager to replace junior developers such as myself -- regardless of whether it's a smart move or not. This will likely lead to depressed salaries and more competition. I don't love coding to the point where I'd do it just for the sake of it, so I don't feel I could just "stick it out". I had tried to be a graphic designer and was met with abysmal job prospects so I chose tech for its relatively better stability and pay. Now that that's heavily under attack, and design/art careers are also going to be threatened, what to do? I just haven't had the time to hone my skillset for the last 10-15 years to make myself a highly sought-after senior. When the job is going to be 80% automated in the next 5 years, I wonder whether it's still worth it trying to get better. All the skills I have or thought I was building seem to be becoming non-marketable in the near future.

How do you all cope with this feeling, if you have it? Have you taken steps to "AI-proof" your career? Or have you successfully transitioned away from tech?

Thanks in advance for any insights. I know I sound very defeated and anxious right now, because I am, but I'm here to try and gain a new, hopeful perspective.

4 comments

4 comments · 2 top-level

halfmatthalfcat3y ago· 1 in thread

Let me paint you a picture:

- During the dotcom crash (2000s) people had the same sentiments

- During the "offshoring"/"nearshoring" (mid-late 2010s) craze people had the same sentiments

- During the "no-code" craze (late 2010s) people had the same sentiments

Now with LLMs, people are going through it again. Through each transformative time in tech, very little has been "replaced" and if anything, the appreciation for well crafted/architected software has only increased in value.

juvvelOP3y ago

Yeah, I've heard the same from other people who have been around the block much longer than I have. On the other hand, something about AI just feels like it could be disruptive in the same way that the printing press got rid of typesetters and cars got rid of horse carriages.

obpe3y ago· 1 in thread

While I do see huge potential in AI, I personally do not see it as the existential threat you propose in this post. This is something I have thought a lot about.

Do you have a CS degree? If so, then it shouldn't matter too much that your only experience is in web dev, you'll just be looking for more junior roles in other fields which is probably true given your time out off and minimal experience anyway.

Firstly, technology moves fast but business's move slow. I work in a very strict environment due to the regulation of the industry and the volume of PII we deal with. So my work has prohibited the use of AI tools due to unknown security risks. Until they can quantify and mitigate the risk, they probably won't let us use these tools. Furthermore, the software I work on was running on Windows Server 2003 until a couple years ago. Of course, there is a difference between possible efficiency gains from implementing AI and a server upgrade which would provide no direct business efficiencies. By efficiencies I mean improved revenue or reduced cost.

Secondly, I don't think it's possible to "AI-proof" your career since there is no consensus on how AI will be integrated into our daily work flows. There are editor plugins to generate snippets of code directly; you can generate entire pages, sites or applications with a single prompt; you can provide code to debug; and then there are projects working to integrate AI into existing tools, like the project to have AI generate code based on pull requests in Github.

Imo, the best part of software development is the continuous learning you must undertake in order to stay relevant in this field. If you want to stay in this field then start learning what is happening and how best to apply it to your job/role/project/department. If you are the one leading the charge then you're probably not the one they are going to get rid of when they start needing less developers.

Or maybe your best course of action is to find something new. You have a lot of career left in your life, perhaps a field you feel less anxious about would be better for you. My brother-in-law just finished obtaining his commercial pilots license. A lot of people told him it was a bad idea because he's in his mid thirties which is "too old" to start being a pilot; also a field which AI could imminently take over. But it's his dream and that's what he decide was best for him.

juvvelOP3y ago

> Firstly, technology moves fast but business's move slow.

True. This is one thing that gives me hope at the moment, especially since my country is notoriously slow in adopting technological chance anyway, lol. It's easy to forget that not everyone lives and works at the bleeding edge.

> If you are the one leading the charge then you're probably not the one they are going to get rid of when they start needing less developers.

Yeah, I am very curious and eager to learn by nature, and I grasp new concepts and their relationships to other topics quickly (other's words, not mine), but I've been burned before, so I've become more cautious. I don't fit the profile of a typical nerd so I lack credibility right off the bat even though I have outperformed self-proclaimed seniors on more than one occasion. I've found myself naturally unafraid of taking charge but sometimes people won't let you. For example, I was working on a project where I was technological lead and the dude from another agency we were working with (and kinda dependent on) was referring to me as (non-technical) "project manager" constantly and refused to talk to me about technical matters. Things like this have happened with middle-aged men quite often, who tend to dominate the field where I live. Sorry for the tangent but it might explain some of my cautiousness.

> But it's his dream and that's what he decide was best for him.

Glad to hear it felt right for him. I feel I'm not in a position where I can afford following my dream at the moment.

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