Reddit Experience · Feb 2026 · USA

Scared about AI replacing us. How are younger engineers supposed to plan?

SWE System Design New Grad
142 upvotes 159 replies

Interview Experience

I’m a relatively newer software engineer (not a new grad though) and lately I’ve been feeling genuinely anxious about the future of this field. After hearing about how much more capable newer AI model

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I’m a relatively newer software engineer (not a new grad though) and lately I’ve been feeling genuinely anxious about the future of this field. After hearing about how much more capable newer AI models are getting at coding, debugging, and even system design, I can’t stop thinking about what this means for our jobs long term. I am especially terrified after hearing about how great the new codex model is. I just started working, I’m finally making good money, and I put years of effort into getting here through school, interviews, and grinding leetcode. The idea that all of that could become irrelevant or heavily devalued is honestly scary. Some questions I keep thinking about: Do you believe software engineers will actually be replaced, or just significantly reduced in number? If replacement does happen, what realistically happens to people already in the field? How should someone relatively younger or newer be planning right now? Are there areas of CS that seem more resilient, or is this something nobody can really predict? I’m not trying to doompost. I’m just trying to think rationally about the future without either panicking or pretending nothing is changing. Would really appreciate perspectives from people who have been in the industry longer.

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Topics

System Design