I’m pretty green, graduated in 2020. Just started a new job as an engineer last month at a larger company with proper change control, peer review, mentorship, clear career development opportunities. I’m so excited I made the jump because I’ve primarily worked in small shops where I just learned by the seat of my pants, praying with every keystroke I don’t take down prod (got really good at restoring from backups!) Don’t get me wrong, I have had some great mentors, but constant baptism by fire gets old fast.
I’ve been admittedly hesitant about AI because I wasn’t sure how impactful it might be, but I did present ChatGPT to my team right around when they rolled it out a few years ago. company didn’t want to pay for it. At the time, I just saw the single vertical opportunity to document the legacy systems i was struggling to understand and maintain for them, starting to think there’s a lot more to it than that. I get it, still early and some companies move slower than others.
My new company is 100% full steam ahead with AI and how to reach every role in the company with it. They have a ton of stuff available to us for learning and are giving out tokens like crazy from what i’ve heard. We even have a leaderboard for people who save the most “hours” through automation. It’s not something I can be hesitant about anymore. But my dev team is pretty set in their ways, not “all-in” like some are in the company. So I honestly have a lot of training and catch up to do and an opportunity on my team to signal to the company that I’m on board.
I guess I have kinda had my head in the sand about it and I suspect a lot of people are like that right now. This sudden shift in my personal world and experience has been a little jarring for me, some folks are saying Engineering roles won’t exist at all, some say it will change but grow because of the ability to amplify an engineers output. I have terrible anxiety and grew up pretty broke, so really worried about being let go and the market for my skills evaporating. I’m really worried about the 5-10 year horizon for me. that’ll be my 30s and possibly some of my highest earning opportunity years are probably there. If I miss the boat by not staying up to date with AI or AI is truly able to replace me and my labor, I am really worried I’ll end up back to broke. I cannot stress enough how nice it is to not be at the bottom of the hierarchy pyramid of needs.
I have been saving money too, but just had a lot happen the last year so e fund is pretty wiped out but my households savings rate is roughly 20% right now and should bounce back by the end of the year. Most of my peers aren’t able to or choose not to save anything at all so I feel OK about the 20% but also i’m kicking myself for not saving more.
How are you folks navigating this within your orgs? What are you doing to hedge? I had a plumber over today and thought his job is safe probably for that 5-10 year horizon, not that it’s particularly enjoyable work. But even if so, if people like me become unemployable en masse who’s going to pay the plumber to come out? Idk I guess I’m just late 20s and worried about the decade ahead. There has always been a lot of uncertainty, I know. I’m sure there’s lots of folks on this page who were working on these very same systems during the 1970s oil crisis, or the 80s debt crisis, or the .com bubble, or the 08 financial crisis, or covid so I’d love to hear how to mentally navigate those. I’m just tired man. I got thru covid right as i started working and it sucked, do I just have to keep doing that forever and hope to get lucky?