Last week, my laptop threw the biggest tantrum after I did a super npm install. Yeah, I should have known better, but here we are. I did what anyone would do, opened LinkedIn and started doomscrolling. And, of course, right there in my feed, yet another person yelling about how “AI is about to take all the frontend jobs!” I swear, every time I log in, it’s someone new acting like ChatGPT is about to build the next Facebook while the rest of us are left learning how to make balloon animals for cash.
I only graduated last year. I still don’t get why every company has their own version of Agile (is there a secret handshake I missed or something?), and suddenly I’m supposed to have a hot take on whether I just wasted four years and way too much money learning to do something a bot can do in five minutes. Try bringing that up at a family dinner, by the way. Fun times.
But here’s the thing: I’ve actually tried these AI tools. Like, for real. Copilot, ChatGPT, Bard, I’ve thrown some truly cursed CSS at all of them. Sometimes the suggestions are okay. Other times, it’s like the AI is just making up new HTML tags to see if I’ll notice. (That <butt> suggestion still haunts my dreams. I guess AI has jokes now.) But, yeah, it’s not exactly “fire the whole dev team” material.
The people doing the hiring, though? They don’t always see the mess. I’ve had interviews where the vibe was, “So, how can you use AI to make yourself not needed?” No joke, one guy actually said, “If you have ChatGPT, why do we need you?” I wanted to say, “Have you seen what it spits out for React?” But, you know, rent exists.
There’s this massive gap right now. The AI hype train is running wild, but in the real world, at least for frontend devs like me, it’s not really matching up. Sure, AI can spit out some boilerplate and sometimes help with tests (when it’s not making up random stuff), but building a real product? With all the weird browser stuff, accessibility messes, and last second design changes? AI just isn’t there.
But companies are acting like it is. I’ve seen job ads for “AI first developer” and “prompt engineer preferred.” I still don’t totally get what that means. Is it just pasting prompts all day? Is that a real job? (And if it is, does it come with dental?)
And, not gonna sugarcoat it, junior jobs are down. Like, way down. I’ve got friends who’ve been grinding LeetCode for months, sending out resumes like it’s a side hustle. It kind of feels like we’re all just waiting, waiting to see if the AI hype dies down, or if we’re all just going to be writing prompts until we retire.
Sometimes I wonder if I just picked the worst career at the worst time. I seriously love building stuff. There’s nothing like finally getting that one button to center after hours of fighting with CSS. (Small wins, but they matter.) But the anxiety is real. Is this just another “cloud will steal your job” scare, or is this time actually different?
A friend always brings up the mainframe panic. “Everyone thought programmers would vanish,” he says. (Spoiler: they didn’t.) But AI feels different because it’s moving at warp speed. Two years ago, ChatGPT wasn’t even a thing. Now, it’s everywhere.
Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. Is this just another hype cycle, or is it actually the start of something big? Should I be learning prompt engineering instead of, I don’t know, finally getting my head around TypeScript?
If I had to bet, I’d say we’re in for a few weird years. Companies will keep trying to “AI ify” everything because it sounds cool at conferences. But reality will hit eventually. Someone’s going to ship a whole product built by AI, and it’ll break in ways that are both hilarious and a little sad, and everyone will remember why we still need human devs.
But hey, maybe tomorrow OpenAI or Google drops something that can build an entire app from scratch, and then… I guess I’ll finally learn to fix bikes or something.
Here’s what I keep coming back to: writing code is, like, half the job. The rest is talking to designers, figuring out what the product manager actually wants, untangling legacy code, and, my personal favorite, browser support (If you know, you know.)
AI doesn’t get why the designer is going to change their mind about the button color three times before lunch. It doesn’t know the CEO’s nephew needs the app to work on his Nintendo 3DS browser (yes, that really happened to me). And accessibility? I’ve seen AI generate stuff that would make a screen reader cry.
So, yeah, AI can help. It can spit out boilerplate, suggest tests, maybe write a reducer if you’re lucky. But actually building something people use? Still a human thing.
What really gets to me is how many people in charge don’t seem to get any of this. There’s this vibe of, “Oh, AI can write code? Sweet, let’s let go half the devs.” But then you see what the AI actually spits out, and, well, good luck shipping that.
I get it, everyone wants to save money and look cutting edge. But firing your mechanic because you bought a Roomba? Not really the same.
Heard stories about companies hiring “AI engineers” who just spend all day prompting ChatGPT and then twice as long fixing the mess it makes. Why not just hire someone who knows what they’re doing? Feels like common sense, but what do I know.
So what’s the move? Most of us are just kind of waiting. Waiting for the hype to settle down, for companies to realize AI isn’t magic, for the job market to stop being so weird. In the meantime, I’m doing some freelance gigs, contributing to open source, trying to keep my skills sharp. I’m not betting on AI disappearing, but I’m not betting on it replacing me tomorrow either.
I keep thinking about all those other times tech was “about to kill jobs”, cloud, low code, WordPress. Panic, then everyone adapts. Rinse, repeat.
Still, it’s stressful. It’s hard to plan anything when you don’t know if your job’s gonna exist in five years.
Here’s what really keeps me up at night: what if actual AGI shows up? Like, real smart AI. Most of the big jumps in AI happened way faster than anyone guessed. Two years ago, nobody thought LLMs would be writing code this well. So what if tomorrow, someone drops an AGI that can do everything I do, but better?
That’s the real wild card. If that happens, it’s not just frontend jobs, it’s every job. Full on sci fi mode. I have no clue what I’d do then. Maybe I’ll learn to fix bikes. Or start a band. Or just move somewhere with bad WiFi so the robots can’t find me.
But until then, I’m not freaking out. Well, not too much.
I wish I had answers. I’m just someone who likes making buttons look good and arguing about tabs vs. spaces, though I realize, there is a limit how much of a good button I can make to keep my job lol. If you’re reading this and you’re in the same boat, just starting out, wondering if you picked the wrong career, I get it.
Maybe the move is to focus on the stuff AI can’t do:
- Talking to people (er, I might have spoken too soon on this one)
- Understanding business
- Shipping actual products
- Dealing with weird browser bugs (looking at you, Edge)
- Handling last second design chaos
Maybe it’s learning to work with AI, not against it. Or maybe it’s just hanging on until things calm down.
I really don’t know. If you have ideas, let me know. I’ll be here, fighting with webpack, waiting to see if the robots take my job or if I’ll still be here, laughing at that cursed <butt> element.
Anyway, thanks for sticking around through my rant. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a a hell of a button make.
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