This originally began as one lengthy post but I’ve broken it into multiple posts that are more digestible. This is part 5.
This applies more for juniors, but seniors should beware too:
I see a lot of organizations that have “LLM-required” mandates from management. I see this as a huge red flag that those developer jobs are in danger of being replaced or reduced. For whatever acceleration they may tout they are targeting, the real danger here is that if your job becomes purely prompt engineering, you are being forced into potential skill atrophy and also your role can be replaced by someone who can be paid less for doing the same work.
“AI”-driven Layoffs
Recently, Amazon laid off 14,000 corporate (read “white collar”) employees. It included employees in “Amazon’s cloud, grocery, video games, human resources, sustainability and communications, ads and devices”. Management at Amazon very much believes humans can be replaced by LLMs, and is acting on that belief.
Fortune magazine quotes Jason Schloetzer:
“it’s not so much AI directly taking jobs, but AI’s appetite for cash that might be taking jobs”
The article notes these large corporations and their planned / executed layoffs:
| Company | Layoffs | % of workforce | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | 14,000 | 4% | AP News |
| UPS | 34,000 | - | AP News |
| Target | 1,800 | 8% | AP News |
| Nestlé | 16,000 | - | AP News |
| Lufthansa Group | 4,000 | - | AP News |
| Novo Nordisk | 9,000 | 11% | AP News |
| ConocoPhillips | 2,600-3,250 | 20-25% | AP News |
| Intel | ~22,000 | 15% | AP News |
| Microsoft | 15,000 | - | AP News |
| Proctor & Gamble | 7,000 | 6% | AP News |
Note that not all of these cuts are strictly due to “AI”, but this was cited expressly as a factor by more than a few of them.
LLM-driven Skill Caps
If you’re a junior and all of your development is based on generated code, then the limitation of your capabilities is capped at what you are able to produce with an LLM. You will speed out of the gate in a vehicle that has rocket-fast acceleration but a lower overall max speed.
The corrollary to this, of course, is that a developer who chooses NOT to use LLMs to drive their development will have a higher ceiling cap, though it may take longer to get to that point. Your metaphorical vehicle has a lower acceleration but ultimately a much higher skill ceiling. By choosing the slower route, you will ultimately be a stronger developer and ostensibly more competitive in the marketplace.
Market Recovery
I sincerely believe that when the hype finally dies down a bit, as it did for Blockchain, there will be a demand for skilled developers again.
The abilities of LLMs are impressive, but they are predominantly better at creation than maintenance, because creation can ostensibly be done de novo whereas maintenance requires synthesis of context. As things get more and more complex and as systems grow, it will eventually be too large or costly to perform these functions, even with RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation).
This may or may not be partly behind the ravenously hungry appetite that the various “AI” companies have for expansion and growth – in order to make good on the bets that are being made by corporate America, there will need to be an expansion of computing power.