KJ

@shivi1026 You are simultaneously in demand and people would love to fire you if they could

What’s one harsh truth about tech careers ?

@1ssve Meh Pick and choose your battles When you see something you can knock out of the park, do it. A couple of those a year and you're golden The guy who does everything is the guy everybody wants to do their stuff for them.

Convince me otherwise… but working harder at your job doesn’t actually get you further.

It's fueled by jealousy and resentment A lot of people are jealous of the money good engineers command. Along comes AI and those same folks love the idea that it's finally time to see engineers hurt Look at all the journalists gleefully writing about the end of the dev with zero self awareness

The idea that AI will get rid of software engineers is the biggest lie of the AI era told to people. Software engineers are not those who just crank out code, but those who enjoy going deep and making connections in a multidimensional space. It would be very naive to assume that AI will magically increase the number of such people, just because the majority of people do not want to get into the nitty gritty, they want results right now without thinking too much, that’s it. AI will just keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and when it becomes capable of one shotting Canva in its current form, companies and engineers will just be writing something 100x more complex, that’s it.

“AI is replacing engineers” then why are there 67k+ software engineering openings right now market’s clearly trending up again idk man something’s not adding up

Well, let's level set on degrees. No. I interview people all the time with degrees in philosophy, finance, business. Those are not screened out. No degree? That may be an issue. Better have a good portfolio. And, I don't expect people to have experience with X tool. Some may. I look for understanding the concepts related to the position Software engineering is about problem solving. Languages, tools and frameworks are just tools. A professional learns whatever tool they need to do their job. Being professional is how you approach your job, not what stage you are in your career

@kjrostra @jordanhenderson @TechLayoffLover That's crap. People without degrees are filtered automatically. And with all the hundreds of frameworks & tools to learn, how do you expect anyone to have experience in X tool, that's your job to teach them how to use it or stop expecting it from them.

Computer science professor at a major state university just finished the worst faculty meeting in 32 years of academia Department head dropped the placement statistics like a bomb at 2:47 PM on a Wednesday 2023: 89% placement rate within 6 months of graduation 2024: 67% placement rate 2025: 34% placement rate 2026 projections: 12% placement rate 312 CS majors graduating this spring. Industry contacts saying maybe 40 will find work. The dean wants to know why enrollment is still climbing while job prospects crater Faculty sitting there like deer in headlights because what the fuck do you tell 19-year-olds taking out $40k per year in loans Half the curriculum is already obsolete. Teaching data structures while companies replace entire engineering teams with Claude and Cursor. One professor suggested pivoting to "AI collaboration skills" and got laughed out of the room Another said we should warn students. Department head said that would "damage program reputation and university revenue" So they keep taking tuition money from kids who will graduate into a wasteland Career services still posts those bullshit salary averages from 2022 when new grads were getting $140k offers Now the same companies are hiring 2 senior engineers with AI tools instead of 12 junior developers Every CS professor knows their students are walking into a meat grinder But the university needs those enrollment numbers to hit budget targets They're literally selling degrees that lead to DoorDash driving

Number 2 is the big one. Human in the loop is crucial if you want reliable results and it's the one everybody wants to cut Vibe coders want to yolo a huge saas and huge saas companies want to get rid of the developer People want to use AI to cut people out. Sad, but I'm afraid true

How to destroy your company with AI... 1. Use it to replace humans rather than to empower them. 2. Fail to build in guardrails and human-in-the-loop for output and actions. 3. Expect employees to embrace AI without proper motivation or training. 4. Automate customer-facing interactions before thorough human testing. 5. Let the tools dictate your strategy instead of your strategy dictate your tools. Anthropic itself recently found out just what's at stake the hard way when their own AI tools released Claude's source code to the world. I've occasionally been guilty of at least 3 of these myself. I suspect I'm not alone.

I would if they demonstrated individual experiences. Open source, personal projects etc... That's where it cuts both ways. If a CS grad hasn't shown the initiative of a vibe coders to at least take a crack at building something cool, that speaks to a lack of self motivation. I'd rather have the scrappy self learner who knows their stuff vs a grad with no drive or initiative.

@kjrostra @TechLayoffLover Genuine question: would you hire a new grad from a strong CS program for a mid-level position? Most CS students I know want to rely on their hard-earned skill and not AI to get jobs

No. It is absolutely not. At least not in my interviews. I'm not interested in playing quiz show. I ask questions like - explain how REST works or explain how Android and iOS build process differs? I'm looking for understood knowledge of concepts. That knowledge is way faster than any LLM. If they can immediately begin an explanation, they don't understand it. If you can't explain the concept of REST without Claude, you have 0 need to be writing code for a living.

@kjrostra @TechLayoffLover People using AI during the interview is exactly what you want. Remember these tools now exist and you want your developer to understand them?

@Yuchenj_UW Absolutely Some of my best work is changing a line or two. If you have proper architecture, that's not an uncommon thing.

The dumbest way to evaluate engineers today is by counting lines of code.

Then they probably need to evaluate CS degrees. The unique thing about software development is most tools are free to use for students If you've graduated from a CS program and haven't built things to show qualifications, that's a choice The fact is, people get hired all the time without a degree. Experience is user driven.

@kjrostra @TechLayoffLover "qualified people" Yeah, entry level people just coming out of school with CS degrees are not seen as qualified for anything but Industry training. The "qualified people" are using AI to do the entry level work.

@dwlz The most important skill for a dev right now is the ability to rapidly read the output of an active agent and then hit the escape key and redirect. If they can handle a couple widows at the same time, all the better. Throw in knowledgeable code reviews and that's your person

Based on recent conversations, demand for good software engineers is about to go parabolic.

@SourabhGurwani Repeating patterns

Interviewer: A 10GB file becomes 3GB when zipped. No quality lost. No data removed. So the real question is: Why was it 10GB in the first place?

@AdiPolak @InfoQ That's what I'm questioning They have more resources so they can spend more on training. Has anything really improved in the last year or is it just more training data and faster hardware masquerading as version updates?

we keep calling them “smart” but LLMs just predict next tokens - no reasoning, no awareness - and yet with the right context(and prompts!), they feel like they think… are we building smarter models or just better context shapers? 🎙️

@neet_sol Yep. It should be 2 One freeform. No tech screen. Ask real questions that test platform familiarity conversationally. That also screens for AI cheaters. If they are slow they don't know it or they're waiting for results to display. Final round of top 5

we need to throw tomatoes at whoever created interviews with multiple rounds

@TheGeorgePu Pay attention to who is getting let go. Call me a pessimist but my bet is they'll aggressively cut and then backfill with contractors, even though that's about the worst thing they could do

AI companies raised $297 billion in 90 days. Tech companies cut 45,000 jobs in the same window. The money isn't disappearing. It's just not going where it used to. Capital is building tools. Not teams.

@dvassallo You do you, but there are plenty of people interested in AI with real insights Also, there's a ton of accounts blasting AI slop every day that don't mention AI. This is a silly criteria

Unfortunately if I see the word "AI" in someone's bio, I assume all their posts are automated AI nonesense.

@CodeWithAmann Perl

Developers be honest. In which language did you write your first "Hello World"?

@Arcane_Aii Yeah... that's like trusting a carnival barker.

🚨BREAKING: The CEO who built Claude just published a 38-page warning letter to humanity. Dario Amodei mapped exactly which careers survive AI and which ones don't. No hype. No doom. Just the coldest, most specific prediction any AI leader has ever made. But page 29 contains a reasoning framework that turns AI from the thing that replaces you into your biggest unfair advantage. Here are 9 Claude prompts built on Amodei's own AI methodology that put you years ahead of everyone who didn't read this:

@NoahKingJr Kind of makes trust difficult

When Claude says "you're absolutely right" knowing that I'm 100% wrong

The dumbest person you know is being told 'you are absolutely right' by some LLM right now.