Does anyone have any advice for getting through the next year or 2 as a software engineer?
I've been working as a SWE for 5 years, got no other marketable skills or passions.
I like working in software, I like building things, I like problem solving, I like writing code.
But since the start of the year and the massive rise of 'agentic engineering', I've had massive anxiety and doubts about my staying in this career.
Right now changing careers isn't realistic, I've dependents and the pay is pretty good.
There's lots of things I don't like about the AI landscape, but the apparent sacrifice of the following things on the altar of productivity twists my guts: quality, critical thinking, understanding of what you built and ownership of the software, and general satisfaction of writing code.
My therapist has advised that if a belief about the fiture helps alleviate my anxiety, I should explore that because we have no idea how the future will turn out.
My current belief (or hope I guess) is that between a year or two 'agentic engineering' will be thrown away as useless or silly; whether because the AI bubble pops and frontier models become too expensive or inaccessible or the the industry moves on to some other hype.
Maybe tools like opencode or jetbrains remain, but used in a much more constrained way and I can just use these things when appropriate or they're actually useful.
Is this too much coping? Anyone share the same idea?