Today, while doing some career mentoring, someone asked me a tough question:
“With AI wiping out so many entry-level software engineering jobs, how should people handle this—especially self-taught developers or non-CS grads?”
Honestly, this is a reality check that engineers worldwide are facing right now. It’s especially brutal for fresh grads entering the market this year. The old playbook for breaking into tech—the one people relied on for decades—just doesn’t work anymore. It used to be that if you could write basic code logic, you could land a junior role. Today, AI has basically taken over that low-level “translation” work.
Here’s my take on it, coming from my own background in Information and Communications:
First, let’s look at the actual core of an engineer’s job: solving business bottlenecks and managing how information flows. For example:
- Poor information flow: The system crashes, or it’s painfully slow.
- Structural changes due to business growth: Say a company expands and hires a dedicated sales rep for outbound cold outreach (a job the boss used to handle). The system’s data flow needs to be tweaked so this new rep can’t access confidential, unpatented tech from the R&D department.
These are just quick examples, but every department and company will have its own unique data architecture challenges.
The key is finding your core value. It’s never about the tech itself; it’s about solving business problems. Once you figure that out, you have to ask: Where is the market for this value?
For me, my core value lies in being a Senior DevOps/SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) focused on system stability. Because I have a solid background in software development, I can tackle system issues from two angles: a high-level business perspective and a low-level technical perspective. This allows me to troubleshoot effectively and find the most cost-efficient solutions. That’s my personal answer.
At the end of the day, AI is just a tool—though it’s fundamentally different from tools of the past because it’s a knowledge-based tool. It’s completely normal to feel anxious about it right now. This is a lot like the 1990s when Excel took off in the accounting world. People thought accountants were done for, but they didn’t disappear. Why? Because the core business need never went away.
So, when people say “AI is going to replace junior engineers,” a more accurate way to put it is: AI will replace the roles that only involve translating design blueprints into code.