Sofware developer roles, still worth it?
Discussion
A bit of context.
I've been a freelance web app developer since 2006. I've worked with most web-based stacks (PHP, Java, C# (.NET), Angular etc). I've worked with pretty much the same clients on and off for years, but I'm noticing that more and more work seems to be going abroad to places like Bosnia where labour costs are far cheaper. Sometimes clients send work abroad and come back to me when they're not happy with the outcome, sometimes they don't. I have some clients taking on projects, offshoring 100% of the development and simply doing the management side of things in-house in order to compete on price. For example, there was a project which they quoted around £400k to do in-house, but the client had an offshore quote for £150k. They ended up agreeing to offshore the dev and re-quoted at something like £200k just to win the work.
Once you factor in the recent rise in AI, it feels like there's less and less demand for UK based software developers.
Looking 10-20 years into the future, it's looking like any job that can be replaced with AI, or offshored, will be. That doesn't leave much in the UK other than roles that require a physical presence.
I've been a freelance web app developer since 2006. I've worked with most web-based stacks (PHP, Java, C# (.NET), Angular etc). I've worked with pretty much the same clients on and off for years, but I'm noticing that more and more work seems to be going abroad to places like Bosnia where labour costs are far cheaper. Sometimes clients send work abroad and come back to me when they're not happy with the outcome, sometimes they don't. I have some clients taking on projects, offshoring 100% of the development and simply doing the management side of things in-house in order to compete on price. For example, there was a project which they quoted around £400k to do in-house, but the client had an offshore quote for £150k. They ended up agreeing to offshore the dev and re-quoted at something like £200k just to win the work.
Once you factor in the recent rise in AI, it feels like there's less and less demand for UK based software developers.
Looking 10-20 years into the future, it's looking like any job that can be replaced with AI, or offshored, will be. That doesn't leave much in the UK other than roles that require a physical presence.
TheBinarySheep said:
...Once you factor in the recent rise in AI, it feels like there's less and less demand for UK based software developers.....
One of our big bosses (in a large multinational IT consultancy) was making the claim last week that the use of gen-AI tooling will make UK based resources more attractive versus off-shore as it narrows the gap on the cost of developers and you save on the extra supervisor/manager spend you need for off-shore and the other efficiencies of local staff (language/time zone barriers etc).Truckosaurus said:
One of our big bosses (in a large multinational IT consultancy) was making the claim last week that the use of gen-AI tooling will make UK based resources more attractive versus off-shore as it narrows the gap on the cost of developers and you save on the extra supervisor/manager spend you need for off-shore and the other efficiencies of local staff (language/time zone barriers etc).
It's certainly another way to look at it, but wouldn't it also reduce the cost of offshore developers too?
Software developer since 1996, started off in VB6 and then became a consultant who doesn't really do much programming anymore about 8 years ago. My company have just outsourced the majority of support to the Philippines and South Africa a couple of months ago. They might not have any experience and are more used to following a flowchart of questions (our software is VERY complicated) but what the hell, they are cheaper.
We as consultants don't do much face to face consultancy anymore as we all work from home, but we will speak to clients every day. I get the feeling the upper management think that they will be able to outsource us as well, they are just working out how to do it.
As you can imagine, having your first and second line support in a foreign country who have only been with the company for a couple of months and are used to following a script is going down like a bucket of cold sick with our clients. I spoke to a client today who was showing me the emails he had received from the Philippines support and their advice was absolutely laughable.
But despite being continually told we are "client centric" I get the impression the only thing that matters at the moment is that they are cheaper, the fact they are useless is irrelevant.
I am hoping to retire in ten years and was hoping this would be my last ever job. The way things are going, I am sure some idiot in management thinks we can all be replaced by AI and some person in the Philippines who has been on a three day training course.
Glad I am not starting my career today.
We as consultants don't do much face to face consultancy anymore as we all work from home, but we will speak to clients every day. I get the feeling the upper management think that they will be able to outsource us as well, they are just working out how to do it.
As you can imagine, having your first and second line support in a foreign country who have only been with the company for a couple of months and are used to following a script is going down like a bucket of cold sick with our clients. I spoke to a client today who was showing me the emails he had received from the Philippines support and their advice was absolutely laughable.
But despite being continually told we are "client centric" I get the impression the only thing that matters at the moment is that they are cheaper, the fact they are useless is irrelevant.
I am hoping to retire in ten years and was hoping this would be my last ever job. The way things are going, I am sure some idiot in management thinks we can all be replaced by AI and some person in the Philippines who has been on a three day training course.
Glad I am not starting my career today.
We are stacked with development work. A fortunate position to be in for sure.
I have been encouraging our Dev's to use AI to speed up writing code. Some are using Git, some using Copilot.
Obviously you need to be senior enough to know whats been produced and what needs changing, but I am hopefully that in time it will make us more efficient.
I have been encouraging our Dev's to use AI to speed up writing code. Some are using Git, some using Copilot.
Obviously you need to be senior enough to know whats been produced and what needs changing, but I am hopefully that in time it will make us more efficient.
I'm senior engineer director. Been building a fresh team of devs last year
AI can make devs more efficient for sure but I cant see AI completely replacing devs for a long time.
One of my managers was telling me about some new AI that was released that was supposed to be amazing at writing code. It gets in knickers I a twist trying to compile something and instead of fixing it set out trying to write a new complier.
I'm not worried about my job right now.
AI can make devs more efficient for sure but I cant see AI completely replacing devs for a long time.
One of my managers was telling me about some new AI that was released that was supposed to be amazing at writing code. It gets in knickers I a twist trying to compile something and instead of fixing it set out trying to write a new complier.
I'm not worried about my job right now.
Stu-nph26 said:
On a recent podcast Mark Zuckerberg claimed their AI will be able to replace a mid level dev by the end of the year.
But not on its own. You need developer skills to know what to ask, how to ask it and also to filter out the wheat from the chaff.A good engineer in 2025 should be able to harness AI well. I would certainly include it on every technical interview.
Adapt or die.
272BHP said:
Stu-nph26 said:
On a recent podcast Mark Zuckerberg claimed their AI will be able to replace a mid level dev by the end of the year.
But not on its own. You need developer skills to know what to ask, how to ask it and also to filter out the wheat from the chaff.A good engineer in 2025 should be able to harness AI well. I would certainly include it on every technical interview.
Adapt or die.
Scabutz said:
I'm senior engineer director. Been building a fresh team of devs last year
AI can make devs more efficient for sure but I cant see AI completely replacing devs for a long time.
One of my managers was telling me about some new AI that was released that was supposed to be amazing at writing code. It gets in knickers I a twist trying to compile something and instead of fixing it set out trying to write a new complier.
I'm not worried about my job right now.
I saw someone on another forum run `sudo rm -rf /*` because he let ChatGPT do all his system admin. Luckily I think this was on a virtual machine set up for the purpose of testing LLMs as system admins, but it could have been very bad.AI can make devs more efficient for sure but I cant see AI completely replacing devs for a long time.
One of my managers was telling me about some new AI that was released that was supposed to be amazing at writing code. It gets in knickers I a twist trying to compile something and instead of fixing it set out trying to write a new complier.
I'm not worried about my job right now.
The thinking models are good, but they still miss really basic things unless you spoon feed it everything, and saying "I want to do x, what do I need to take into account" doesn't always get the right answer and they seem worse at driving themselves into a dead end or changing tack when the user decides they want something slightly different.
Off-shoring is more of a threat to UK jobs than AI code authoring tools. I've been writing software for just under 40 years and have been involved in several AI projects and it's no where near being able to replicate the skillset needed.
UK Universities selling Visas to a large numbers of foreign workers has also played a part.
UK Universities selling Visas to a large numbers of foreign workers has also played a part.
Some companies are still limiting the use of AI, for various reasons, some regulated industries are too.
I see AI as a tool, just like anything else, it needs to be understood and controlled.
In regulated industry I can see much scrunity being placed on AI output - for example if you used AI to build software, would you alow the same AI to test it ? so if we then use a different AI engine to test, great - but how similar are they ? could they both miss a vulnerability/bug ?
To be honest developers haven't just been sat writing code for a long time now - system design/architecture, requirement definition, change impact analysis, estimation, performance instrumentation, the ever present security assessment, systems integration, verification all take time, the coding bit is the small/easy bit.
I see AI as a tool, just like anything else, it needs to be understood and controlled.
In regulated industry I can see much scrunity being placed on AI output - for example if you used AI to build software, would you alow the same AI to test it ? so if we then use a different AI engine to test, great - but how similar are they ? could they both miss a vulnerability/bug ?
To be honest developers haven't just been sat writing code for a long time now - system design/architecture, requirement definition, change impact analysis, estimation, performance instrumentation, the ever present security assessment, systems integration, verification all take time, the coding bit is the small/easy bit.
I'm not too concerned at the minute, but certainly think I will be in the future.
I'm a generalist developer, and that's one of my biggest selling points. My clients benefits massively from my broad range of knowledge that spans requirement gathering, UI design and multiple languages/stacks. For years I always felt inadequate because I never became a specialist, but now I'm older I've realised that it's no longer a negative. AI and offshoring will replace parts of what I do, but it'll be a long time before either can completely replace me.
I'm a generalist developer, and that's one of my biggest selling points. My clients benefits massively from my broad range of knowledge that spans requirement gathering, UI design and multiple languages/stacks. For years I always felt inadequate because I never became a specialist, but now I'm older I've realised that it's no longer a negative. AI and offshoring will replace parts of what I do, but it'll be a long time before either can completely replace me.
Crafty_ said:
Some companies are still limiting the use of AI, for various reasons, some regulated industries are too.
IME it's a bit like Russian sanctions it doesn't change much ,it just kicks that section of the operation to another company who does use AI but whose T&Cs are a little more ambiguous lizardbrain said:
IME it's a bit like Russian sanctions it doesn't change much ,it just kicks that section of the operation to another company who does use AI but whose T&Cs are a little more ambiguous
Only if you can prove to regulators/auditors that the 3rd party has followed due process/standards, Doesn't matter who does th work, you'll still need that evidence, at least in my experience.Gassing Station | Jobs & Employment Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff