AI and globalisation are shaking up software developers' world

AI as Productivity Tool vs. Job Threat

• Many see current LLMs (e.g., Cursor-based workflows) as strong productivity boosters: faster boilerplate, debugging, tests, and “getting unstuck,” sometimes claimed as several‑fold personal speedups.
• Others counter that AI mainly handles the “last 20%” once humans have done the hard work of understanding requirements, edge cases, and system behavior.
• Several argue this continues a long history of productivity tools in software that increased demand rather than reduced headcount.
• Concern remains that management may overestimate AI’s capabilities and cut developers prematurely, harming companies before reality corrects them.

Copying, SaaS Margins, and Maintenance

• One camp claims AI makes cloning complex SaaS UIs and backends from screenshots/figma in days, predicting collapsing SaaS margins and commoditized apps.
• Skeptics reply that copying was never the hard part; long-term maintenance, complex business rules, on‑call duty, triage, and trust are where real value lies.
• Some predict a flood of low-quality, “throwaway” AI‑generated SaaS that increases noise and ultimately strengthens established players.
• There is demand for concrete public examples or live demos of fully functional complex clones; claims are viewed as unproven.

Outsourcing, Globalization, and WFH

• Commenters recall earlier offshoring waves that mostly failed to fully replace onshore devs due to management difficulty, vague specs, and communication problems.
• Some expect AI translation and remote‑work norms to reduce language and location advantages of local devs, enabling more global competition.
• Others stress non-coding factors: understanding markets, culture, time zones, and building trust still favor local or closely integrated teams.

Job Security, Professions, and Human Roles

• Views diverge on which professions are “safe”: suggestions range from athletes and politicians to jobs legally protected or valued specifically for being human.
• A long subthread debates whether teachers and other “human connection” roles can or should be replaced by AI, with strong arguments that genuine human relationships remain essential.

Quality and Complexity Concerns

• Multiple comments fear a world of “autocomplete-driven development”: already-mediocre codebases becoming worse, with less accountability and traceability.
• Others argue that inherent software complexity and creeping entropy will keep skilled developers needed, as poor abstractions and design still sink projects.