This just in: IDE manufacturers announced today the death of millions of jobs doing “coding”. Millions of “programmers” today are out of a job, because they are using legacy tools like vi and notepad instead of the coolest new technology. Almost overnight, companies are seeing savings by replacing humans with an IDE. Companies have stopped requisitions for non-IDE applicants. “It’s going to happen in a small amount of time – as little as a couple of years.” Old-school coders will be unnecessary soon, perhaps in this calendar year. “This could wipe out tens of millions of jobs in a very short period of time.”
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So – when will people realize that AI tools change the nature of the work, but they don’t get rid of the person required to do it? Anchoring at n=1, if one person was required to do X without the use of AI tools, then 1 person is still required to do X with the use of AI tools. At n=20, you have to ask: did you have 20 workstreams? If so, then you still need 20 people to drive 20 workstreams. There can be a case made for using AI as a cost-cutting mechanism (but that is small – like ~2% of companies that have made large reductions due to actual, functional AI implementation.) All the other arguments for “AI will take your job” is just speculation, blaming AI as a scapegoat for cost-cutting measures.
Update 2026/02/20: Sam Altman says the quiet part out loud … some companies are ‘AI washing’ by blaming unrelated layoffs on the technology.
“I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs,”
Sam Altman 2026/02/19
AI is everywhere except in the incoming macroeconomic data. … After three years with ChatGPT and still no signs of AI in the incoming data, it looks like AI will likely be labor enhancing in some sectors rather than labor replacing in all sectors.
Torsten Slok, “Waiting for the AI J-Curve”, Apollo Academy