AI Is Taking Our Jobs! (Except Yours, If You’re Useful)
Everyone’s panicking about AI taking over software development jobs. The truth is, if you’re actually adding value, thinking critically, solving real problems and designing systems, you’re fine. The only ones who need to worry are those who contribute absolutely nothing. AI isn’t taking your job; irrelevance is.
Steve Jackson
Chief Data Officer
Steve has over 20 years experience with getting the most out of data platforms having made his clients 100s of millions in cost savings or sales directly attributable to his work. For the last 5 years he has been building an AI driven travel SaaS and vibe coding his way through all kinds of software development hell!
Panic is sweeping through the software world:
“AI will replace us all!” “Developers are doomed!” “Should I start a farm??”
But lets look at reality for a second — much like that comic from WorkChronicles so brutally points out:
If you’re not adding real value, yes, you should probably sweat a little. But if you’re actually contributing something meaningful? Relax. You’re golden.
The AI Reality Check:
If you bring nothing to the table, don’t be surprised when you get replaced. That’s in ANY profession.
Every workplace has that one person who basically contributes by just showing up. (And sometimes, even that feels optional.)
These are the folks who just copy and paste code from ChatGPT without understanding it, pass it to someone else when something breaks, and consider renaming variables “refactoring.”
For those people? Yeah, AI is a real threat.
But if you’re the kind of developer who:
- Designs clean systems
- Understands why something works
- Can untangle a nightmare pull request
- Can de-bug why something doesn’t work
- Actually communicates like a human being
Then AI isn’t competition or your replacement it’s your co-pilot. It’s the eager intern who never sleeps.
AI Isn’t Replacing Talent. It’s Replacing Dead Weight.
Think of AI as a productivity magnifier:
- If you’re good, AI makes you great.
- If you’re mediocre, AI makes you obvious.
- If you’re useless, AI makes you redundant. Time to become at least mediocre.
In other words, if your biggest contribution to a project is being “available on Slack,” maybe it’s time to learn some things about life, the universe and the number 42 before something bad happens to you.
So What’s Actually Going to Happen?
- Good developers will become force multipliers.
- Great developers will become in-demand leaders that develop businesses.
- Lazy developers will… well, probably walk around blissfully unaware they’re useless until they get fired.
AI is not the Grim Reaper for software development. It’s just holding up a mirror. And if you don’t like what you see, don’t blame the mirror.
if you do like what you see, well like I said. Golden!
