Wouldn’t a collection of ones and zeroes that can assist with just about anything be the perfect match for people who manipulate those ones and zeroes for a living? Maybe in a perfect world where the human spirit is still valued it would be matrimony in paradise. Unfortunately, reality is driven by maximizing the profits and exploiting the workers, so AI can be quite detrimental. Let’s start from the ground floor.
Vibe coding is a new term that has grown in popularity and use throughout the last year. I still remember when it was a meme phrase to describe people who ask a AI to create an application, where they have never coded in their life. So they just check to see if the code can run with no issue and if the “vibe” feels right. If not, they throw it back into the prompt repeatedly until they have “working” code.
But then I received a message from an old manager a couple of months back about a reputable software blog talking about the merits of vibe coding and what it means for the future of software development. And I couldn’t be more shocked that a dumb meme is being leveraged and adopted by companies. What the hell is happening?
Vibe coding is the canary in the coal mine. This idea is being pushed as “anyone can code”, which I 100% agree that anyone can code. But you probably should learn how to walk before you try to cartwheel. By having AI develop code, most of which barely works or cannot be extended without heavy rewrites, there is no learning invoked. All you can call yourself is a “prompt engineer” (more on this later) but if you cannot fix the code that is generated or explain how it is actually working, then we need to take a beat and not let this wildfire consume the industry.
By now you may be thinking that I sound like an annoyed developer who was fired in place of a prompt engineer. That is not the case. What I am currently seeing in the industry is a lack of entry level job postings and more and more senior positions that need to be filled. Companies are looking for wingers that know how to develop and can read code, but they do not want to invest in junior devs. This creates two sides of a shit coin, where the only open positions are for lead developers but the only people applying are vibe coders, creating a massive shortfall in functioning code and products will either not be delivered or will be dead on arrival.
If the previous statement was not already worrisome enough, we are seeing companies who are looking to lay off engineers and replace them with artificial intelligence engineers. But this isn’t a human who knows how to develop LLMs. No, this is a chatbot that acts like a developer, creating code from prompts, providing pull request reviews, and pushing out code to test in environments. So not only will the remaining, human developers have to work on their own code, but they will have to monitor these chatbot developers to make sure the code is working, tested, and merged without conflicts. A tale as old as time, where workers are given twice the work for the same or lower pay. And I have no idea who will be responsible for the bot updates within the scrum ceremonies. Let’s hope the AI bubble bursts before this hits every company.
What are we currently seeing being implemented at companies? Prompt engineers. These are employees, some which have coding experience, many who don’t, that test different phrases and inputs on AI models to see what is the perfect combination of words to get the correct output. Then rinse and repeat. Prompt engineers are upper management’s wet dream. Someone who can be paid less than a software engineer due to a lower knowledge requirement, and who is outputting what appears to be just as much as a senior developer can. From a distance, it is perfect. It is when you peer close that you see the deep cracks in the logic.
As previously stated, the output from artificial intelligence will still have to be validated by a human. Which means more work for senior developers, under tighter deadlines, and most likely no change to their current workloads. In an industry that already has high rates of burn out and elitism, AI is a tool that will not be correctly utilized by management, causing repercussions that I don’t think anyone has fully realized yet.
But, not everything is doom and gloom. If you are currently in school for computer science, or are an engineer at any level, continue to have a voracious appetite for learning new things within the world of programming. Because when the AI bubble bursts, and companies are scrambling to find developers who can fix their issues, you will be at the top of the list, and you might just be able to name your price.
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