LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
A 10-year software engineer describes how LLMs have eroded his domain expertise, debugging skills, and architectural knowledge, leaving him uncertain about long-term employability.
The author, a backend engineer specializing in finance and payment systems, built his career on domain expertise in PCI compliance, double-entry ledgers, and distributed system debugging. Within the past year, he observed LLMs progressively replacing each pillar of his value. Claude and GPT models now generate design documents at his company's request, encode architectural knowledge from published sources, and debug complex distributed systems (Claude 4.5 through 5.5 now solve 90% of bugs he once spent days resolving). His final differentiator, code quality and architectural taste, is becoming less valued as the industry accepts "C" or "D"-grade codebases optimized for machine readability rather than human maintainability. He notes that domain expertise no longer distinguishes candidates; his company now posts generic "Software Engineer" roles instead of domain-specific ones. He expresses concern that specialized knowledge accumulated over a decade is becoming promptable, commoditizing senior engineers into generalists competing on the same terms as those with less experience.
What commenters are saying
The thread shows broad validation. Multiple commenters report identical concerns about eroding expertise and domain knowledge becoming useless. A secondary debate emerged on whether artisan software could sustain a career: skeptics note zero market demand for hand-built software compared to other crafts, while defenders cite niche communities (Handmade Hero, content creators) and persistent quality-conscious markets, plus potential for boycotts against AI-generated code. One commenter distinguished between bad codebases (abandoned) versus mediocre ones (now acceptable), suggesting LLMs will filter out mediocre developers while niches remain for handcrafted work. The thread largely accepts the author's core premise and focuses on coping mechanisms rather than refutation.