Advice for Programmers: AI-Proof Your Career
February 24, 2025
Software engineer and blogger Sean Goedecke has some career advice for those who, like himself, are at risk of losing their programming jobs to AI. He counsels, "To Avoid Being Replaced by LLMs, Do What They Can’t." Logical enough. But what will these tools be able to do, and when will they be able to do it? That is the $25 million question. Goedecke has suggestions for the medium term, and the long term.
Right now, he advises, engineers should do three things: First, use the tools. They can help you gain an advantage in the field. And also, know-thine-enemy, perhaps? Next, learn how LLMs work so you can transition to the growing field of AI work. If you can’t beat them, join them, we suppose. Finally, climb the ranks posthaste, for those in junior roles will be the first to go. Ah yes, the weak get eaten. It is a multipronged approach.
For the medium term, Goedecke predicts which skills LLMs are likely to master first. Get good at the opposite of that. For example, ill-defined or poorly-scoped problems, solutions that are hard to verify, and projects with huge volumes of code are all very difficult for algorithms. For now.
In the long term, work yourself into a position of responsibility. There are few of those to go around. So, as noted above, start vigorously climbing over your colleagues now. Why? Because executives will always need at least one good human engineer they can trust. The post observes:
"A LLM strong enough to take responsibility – that is, to make commitments and be trusted by management – would have to be much, much more powerful than a strong engineer. Why? Because a LLM has no skin in the game, which means the normal mechanisms of trust can’t apply. Executives trust engineers because they know those engineers will experience unpleasant consequences if they get it wrong. Because the engineer is putting something on the line (e.g. their next bonus, or promotion, or in the extreme case being fired), the executive can believe in the strength of their commitment. A LLM has nothing to put on the line, so trust has to be built purely on their track record, which is harder and takes more time. In the long run, when almost every engineer has been replaced by LLMs, all companies will still have at least one engineer around to babysit the LLMs and to launder their promises and plans into human-legible commitments. Perhaps that engineer will eventually be replaced, if the LLMs are good enough. But they’ll be the last to go."
If you are lucky, it will be time to retire by then. For those young enough that this is unlikely, or for those who do not excel at the rat race, perhaps a career change is in order. What jobs are safe? Sadly, this dino-baby writer does not have the answer to that question.
Cynthia Murrell, February 24, 2025
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