A Staff Engineer on Whether AI Ends His Career

Sean Goedecke, a staff-level software engineer, makes a candid case that AI agents are likely to eliminate most programming jobs within a decade – and unlike previous scares around outsourcing or no-code tools, he thinks this time the threat is real. His core reasoning is straightforward: AI coding tools have gone from useless to faster than him in routine tasks, and they keep improving monthly. He dismisses the popular Jevons effect argument by pointing out that AI handles maintenance just as well as greenfield work, closing off the usual escape hatch. The most honest part is his framework around companies “overshooting” by cutting engineers too aggressively, then scrambling to rehire. That pattern already played out at Meta and other large tech firms during the 2023 layoff cycle, just without AI as the stated justification.