I can also attest to this. about 2 to 3 years ago when dev houses and startups started utilizing AI I transitioned from a contract dev to a sort of glorified code reviewer/digital janitor. I saw the writing on the wall and figured my skill at code reviewing would become valuable. In hindsight that was an understatement.

Senior devs who have completely embraced AI have stagnated or regressed in their skill set. Juniors/fresh grads are just glorified prompt monkeys. NONE of these places can fix anything that the AI agents build. None of it scales. None of it can be potentially refactored. I get contracted to try to “fix” these issues and I simply tell them it can’t be fixed. they need to start over and ACTUALLY build the thing from scratch with qualified and competent devs. the problem with that is they already laid off said devs or fired the ones that refused to utilize AI in their builds. And even if they wanted to hire those devs back either most have totally abandoned the field (obviously with good reason) or, and good for them, are asking for much higher pay to return.

So yes it’s not going to be a problem, it currently is one. Initial builds can potentially work just fine but after that good luck, everyone is collectively screwed. There’s no one coming out of school that is going to save this and the ones that could save it have said “nope, I’m done”. Myself I’m retiring by the end of this year. I’m also done. I figured I’d focus on FOSS projects but even those projects are drinking the AI Kool-Aid so I’m not going to do that. the few projects I was contributing to or helped maintain I’ve told them I’m done. I’m just not going to touch code anymore unless it’s updating my personal websites or nixos configs. that’s it. I’m out.