Creative Strategies for Surviving the AI-pocalypse

I am very sorry to inform you, but if you are a React / TypeScript frontend engineer a few years into your career, you are ground zero for getting replaced by “AI engineers”. Mark Zuckerberg hath decreed it to be so!

Big Tech is literally salivating at the idea of taking your job away and replacing it with automation at an industrial scale. Their plan seems to be to hire a bunch of low-wage prompt monkeys to coax AI agents into spitting out “working” React code and JSON APIs, and then handing that work off to a dwindling number of senior engineers for final polish and bug-fixing. And if you thought The Great Gaslighting of the JavaScript Era was finally behind us, oh you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!

If you are one of the senior engineers standing idly by while your industry is targeted for mass disruption (not the fun kind), well I can’t say I feel much empathy for you.

And if you are one of those “prompt engineers” helping to take jobs away from qualified craftspeople, well, I’m genuinely sorry you have been trapped inside of a capitalist hellscape which is more than willing to exploit you.

But if you are a “mid-level” software developer, one of the “people engineers” whom Mark Zuckerberg claims will be replaced by “AI engineers”, I have some encouragement for you:

There is a place for you in this world. Just probably not in Big Tech. You may need to downsize, move to an area with a lower cost of living, and get real creative about how you find means of gainful employment.

Here are a few ideas on how to weather the coming storm. Because trust me on this—it is coming. Things will get worse before they get better. The Zucks of the world will see to that.

Local-first community #

The pandemic really did a number on small local tech meetups. Many of them never recovered. It’s been pretty grim here in Portland, Oregon, I can tell you that.

But hope is not lost. New meetups spring up all the time. You should be putting a good deal of time and effort into finding these meetups and attending them as regularly as possible. And if you can’t find any? Start one! (Or two or three!)

In short, wherever you are, you MUST find flesh-and-bloom humans and enjoy face-to-face time with them. Maybe there aren’t enough Programmers with a capital P in your local area, but usually you can find creatives in adjacent industries to network with.

Your ability to survive the coming AI-pocalypse is largely dependent on your ability to network with real people in real life. The Internet alone may have gotten you far, but it won’t get you far enough over the next few years.

Side-hustle like you’ve never hustled before #

It’s always been true that programmers do well when they have some extra irons in the fire besides whatever they’re tasked to do at their day job. Sometimes there is resentment along these lines however—what, are you expecting me to work 9-5, 5 days a week, coding until my fingers ache, and THEN ALSO launch a SaaS and build a mobile app and release ten open source libraries at 11pm or 6am?!

Yes. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I hate to break it to you, but I’ve met with many junior or mid-level programmers over the years for community conversation or coaching, and when I ask them questions such as:

• So what libraries have you written or contributed to?
• What’s your blog URL?
• What meetups are you attending or have started?
• Got an app idea in the works?
• Any cool new techniques you’re willing to share?
• Where are the repos of demos you’ve worked on?

All too often the answers are:

• Ah, well I haven’t done that
• I don’t have a blog
• I haven’t been to any meetups in ages
• I don’t have any app ideas
• Nothing comes to mind
• Oops, I don’t have any good demos

This essay isn’t a deep-dive into time management techniques and productivity tips to help you prioritize these things, but I will just flat out say you must be spending a significant portion of your time focusing on some or all of these initiatives.

And in case you’re wondering, I’m happy to personally help you on the blogging front at least—I maintain a blogging engine (and more besides!) and have been passionate about web publishing even longer than I’ve been passionate about web development. I’ve found the blogosphere to be a pretty welcoming place over the years, and it could be said there’s an exciting resurgence in this area as IndieWeb ideas gain traction once more.

Look beyond the Tech Industry #

It is a misnomer that the best place to work for a programmer is the “tech industry”. I’ve spent the bulk of my career not working for tech companies!

Yes, the pay isn’t as great, generally speaking, but the flip side is I’ve had plenty of work on my plate during several major downturns (including the most recent one!) which adversely affected many of my fellow developers. I’ve developed Web sites and applications for a diverse range of companies and organizations over the decades. I’ve worked with art gallery administrators, non-profit communicators, small business owners, educators, publishers, musicians, and consultancies operating in the public sector—to name but a few!

It’s true that it’s become more of a challenge to discover this type of work in recent years, but over the long term I feel like it’s a much less risky proposition than sticking it out at FAANG-like Silicon Valley-style corporations.

Not only that, but there’s much less likelihood that “AI” will even be relevant in any of the work you’re doing. Thus far I’ve managed to get by just fine with zero, and I mean ZERO usage of any AI coding tools.

No Copilot.

No Claude.

No Supermaven.

None of any of it.

And I’m going to keep on noping the frack right out of touching any of these tools, because they are detrimental and devastating to my personal wellbeing and the future of my professional craft.

Just. Say. No.

Create new industries #

Ultimately we programmers are going to have to take matters into our own hands: building the tools, services, social networks (hello Fediverse! 👋), and markets we wish to see in the world. After all, the tech industry we have today was directly built on top of the backs of the workers—the people truly writing code and caring deeply about the quality and the caliber of the code (and the end-user products) they write.

That’s us, and we need to push back and push back hard on low-quality industrial automation of our profession. Big Tech CEOs should be shamed & shunned at every opportunity whenever they make such ridiculous and insulting grandiose claims that “most code” will be written by “AI engineers” rather than “people engineers”.

I was talking with a fellow prognosticator just recently about this topic, and they claimed not to be seeing any push back in trend data. Supposedly, programmers everywhere are simply embracing LLMs and all of these AI tools.

I have two answers to that:

• If true, this will the be the death knell of our industry. We are sowing the seeds of our own destruction.
• I don’t actually believe this is true! I disagree with their assertion—I see an active, healthy, and growing backlash against so-called “artificial intelligence” being thrust in our faces which isn’t actually intelligent at all.

Listen, there’s a reason the WGA (Writers Guild of America) worked hard to ensure their writers’ rooms were protected—how can seasoned professional writers with award-winning credits to their name become seasoned professionals in the first place if the opportunities to join writers’ rooms as newcomers and learn from the best simply…vanish?

Similarly, how can junior developers become senior developers if the talent development pipeline is utterly upended? Our industry already has a lousy track record when it comes to hiring and nurturing new talent, and I fear it’s about to get much, much worse.

So what can we do about it?

Join the revolution! #

Refuse to use these “AI” tools. Refuse to work for companies which won’t care for their workers and won’t train new workers to become mid-level and eventually senior programmers. Refuse to use products and services sold to you by capitalist pigs.

Recognize the moment we are in. This is war. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t want it. But “war must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” –J. R. R. Tolkein

Do support indie social web initiatives, do support fellow programmers striking out to build new products and services which respect users and respect the art & craft of programming. Be a part of local & online communities which have a zero-tolerance policy against the intellectual theft inherent in commercial AI training data.

Remember, when we band together, when we stand strong and express our values loudly and firmly, we have much more power than we realize. We don’t have to accept the proclamations of Big Tech CEOs as fact! Nothing is “inevitable”. We can tell them that if they won’t support their workers, if they won’t protect civil rights (especially those of marginalized communities), if they won’t back down from promoting the shameless strip mining of the Open Web, they can go pound sand.

Be a part of the revolution. The revolution always has and will always start with you.