So I am currently employed in a rather large US tech company in Europe as a software engineer, I have a masters in comp sci etc etc. I have 3 more years of RSU stocks. I reckon with the speed of generative AI, that lines up pretty well with when my usefulness will be roughly equal to 0.<p>Problem is I am now 32, will then be 35. It might be a bit late to start a new career path at that stage, so should I pull the trigger now instead? I am thinking either plumbing or carpentry as the EU has a new directive where every house has to be above a certain energy threshold, which should give me some respite for a while.<p>What would you do in my situation?
You have to consider that you're wrong that it's just 36 months until your usefulness is 0. (I mean, why not 72 months?) You just don't know that with that level of certainty.<p>One scenario: some AI-written code makes a horrific mistake that makes the news. There's a huge backlash, and a number of companies decide they're more comfortable with human programmers. (Or at least, human programmer <i>reviewing</i> the code, or writing the code with an AI assistant.) Or for that matter, that there's legacy code at old-fashioned companies that just never got around to grafting on AI-powered programming tools. Bottom line: I think there will still be jobs for programmers, far beyond your three-year timeline.<p>A better question is: what do you want to do? If you really want to be a programmer, you could try "future-proofing" your skillset. (For example, going into AI programming -- the one job title that's going to increase in an AI-dominated future.)<p>My other bit of advice: start saving money now. Everyone should do this at your age. There's huge tax advantages to putting money into retirement accounts -- and it just grows and grows over the decades. (But also, if you're truly worried about your high-paying career ending -- then start socking it away now.)
> I reckon with the speed of generative AI, that lines up pretty well with when my usefulness will be roughly equal to 0.<p>Unless you are in a tight specialty area where the writing is on the wall, and you're already close to being replaceable, I think you're over-estimating things. We don't have the much-vaunted paperless office, we're still not really with it with driverless-cars, robots haven't replaced us all yet and we have more work rather than less: so much of what people thought was the future is really a bunch of stuff that isn't there yet, or is not going to actually happen.<p>I'm nearly 50, and what I've learned is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.<p>> It might be a bit late to start a new career path at that stage.<p>You can start whenever. There's a story of a woman, at 80, who said she wished she'd taken up violin at 60. "If I had, I could've been playing for 20 years".