Would you rather have a career AI can’t replace, or a career where AI makes your work easier?

[jhonny9546]

Hello!

We all know by now that the impact of AI is enormous...
They don't want to say it publicly, but AI is silently eliminating jobs.
Companies are only interested in profit. And their ultimate dream is to create perfectly automated machines that work for them.

That said, if you had to make a choice, which one would you choose?

a) Choose a profession that AI will never replace: Psychologist, Doctor, Educator, Skilled Craftsman, Electrician, Plumber, etc.

or

b) Choose a profession that is facilitated by AI or works with it, even if you risk being replaced in the future: Web Developer, IT Technician, AI Maintenance Technician, etc.

I'm curious to hear your answers.

 

[nicksaiz65]

Good question. I’m a software engineer now. I’ve thought about getting some other career path going, but they’d all result in huge pay cuts.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

Good question. I’m a software engineer now. I’ve thought about getting some other career path going, but they’d all result in huge pay cuts.

There are two paths.

1) Have strong fundamental software architecture knowledge and AI becomes a force multiplier.

2) Have weak fundamental software architecture knowledge and AI becomes a chaos multiplier.

The thing people do not seem to understand is that AI simply multiplies what you already are, it doesn't change it.

 

[nicksaiz65]

There are two paths.

1) Have strong fundamental software architecture knowledge and AI becomes a force multiplier.

2) Have weak fundamental software architecture knowledge and AI becomes a chaos multiplier.

The thing people do not seem to understand is that AI simply multiplies what you already are, it doesn't change it.

AI, especially Claude Code has been critical in me keeping up with E2E tests and unit tests when my company gave me a totally unrealistic workload. The layoffs going on right now are a bit worrying though.

 

[nicksaiz65]

There are two paths.

1) Have strong fundamental software architecture knowledge and AI becomes a force multiplier.

2) Have weak fundamental software architecture knowledge and AI becomes a chaos multiplier.

The thing people do not seem to understand is that AI simply multiplies what you already are, it doesn't change it.

Also, on point 2, it’s so good at inspecting the DOM, parsing the requirements, and writing tests.. but I always have to remind it of design patterns. I’m like: NO! Tests should only be reliant on their own state!

 

[BackInTheGame78]

Also, on point 2, it’s so good at inspecting the DOM, parsing the requirements, and writing tests.. but I always have to remind it of design patterns. I’m like: NO! Tests should only be reliant on their own state!

Haha, yes, and I'm always yelling at it to stop polluting the tests with test data and use the pre-existing stubs or create new ones if it needs to.

But tests and documentation are one are that's super useful.

I treat it like a partner and we come up with a plan, document it, break it down into phases, write out what is a valid completion of each one as then as we go along, we update and document what was done and also look for any regressions from the previous phase.

Essentially, treat it like a junior dev with encyclopedic knowledge but inability to know where or when to use any of it, so my role is to provide guidance, guardrails and the narrowest possible specs I can.

 

[nicksaiz65]

Haha, yes, and I'm always yelling at it to stop polluting the tests with test data and use the pre-existing stubs or create new ones if it needs to.

But tests and documentation are one are that's super useful.

I treat it like a partner and we come up with a plan, document it, break it down into phases, write out what is a valid completion of each one as then as we go along, we update and document what was done and also look for any regressions from the previous phase.

Essentially, treat it like a junior dev with encyclopedic knowledge but inability to know where or when to use any of it, so my role is to provide guidance, guardrails and the narrowest possible specs I can.

I really like its planning mode, or I’ll let it go wild then I revise its work with it.

I will say that Claude mogs Copilot. Claude is the best at the E2E tests. I actually use Cursor for unit tests. It’s lightning fast & I’ve been happy with the quality it generates

 

[Scaramouche]

Hi Jhonnie,
" a) Choose a profession that AI will never replace: Psychologist, Doctor, Educator, Skilled Craftsman, Electrician, Plumber, etc. "I am not as confident as you,I think AI assisted Robots will subsume many jobs,saw a UTube where an Assistant Surgeon doing heart operations was replaced by an AI assisted Robot/Machine.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

Hi Jhonnie,
" a) Choose a profession that AI will never replace: Psychologist, Doctor, Educator, Skilled Craftsman, Electrician, Plumber, etc. "I am not as confident as you,I think AI assisted Robots will subsume many jobs,saw a UTube where an Assistant Surgeon doing heart operations was replaced by an AI assisted Robot/Machine.

They've already shown that AI is better than the average doctor at diagnosing things because it doesn't have any biases that come into play.

It's not as good as really good/exceptional doctors tho...but for most people, AI is already better than the doctor they likely go see for their yearly physical every year.

 

[FlexpertHamilton]

Why not both?

AI definitely cannot replace most of what I do/want to do in my career (webmaster, content writing, SEO/digital marketing, OpSec/IT), but I still use it constantly in my personal and professional life as a tool and resource. In fact, I don't think AI can truly replace any job right now, but it can make most people's job easier if they use it right, which really comes down to strictly limiting it's scope only using it for specific purposes. For the most part, I think of and use AI like I would an outsourced Virtual Assistant from India, doing work that I either hate or don't want to learn.

For instance, I despise coding and I'm bad at it, but it's a very useful skill to have for building websites. AI allows me to develop things like PHP or SQL scripts that I wouldn't ever dream of using normally unless I hire Pajeet to do it for me poorly.

 

[nicksaiz65]

Why not both?

AI definitely cannot replace most of what I do/want to do in my career (webmaster, content writing, SEO/digital marketing, OpSec/IT), but I still use it constantly in my personal and professional life as a tool and resource. In fact, I don't think AI can truly replace any job right now, but it can make most people's job easier if they use it right, which really comes down to strictly limiting it's scope only using it for specific purposes. For the most part, I think of and use AI like I would an outsourced Virtual Assistant from India, doing work that I either hate or don't want to learn.

For instance, I despise coding and I'm bad at it, but it's a very useful skill to have for building websites. AI allows me to develop things like PHP or SQL scripts that I wouldn't ever dream of using normally unless I hire Pajeet to do it for me poorly.

Oh, AI is so good at SQL. I'll be like, this would be hell to write manually.