Will AI Replace Developers? A 22-Year Dev's Take

TL;DR

AI coding tools did not replace developers as promised; many CEOs overestimated their impact, laid off too many devs, and are now rehiring. The job market is rebounding but will not return to its 2019 peak because LLMs let applicants spam thousands of resumes. Networking beats resume-blasting for landing roles today.

Transcript

Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of free codecamp.org. And today I'm interviewing 22-year industry veteran Jason Langdorf. He's worked as a developer at IBM Netlefi. He's run his own developer consultancy and he now runs Code TV making reality TV shows for developers. They are sweet. You should tota... Read More

Key Insights

• Many CEOs greatly overestimated the impact of AI coding tools, laid off too many developers, and are now trying to rehire them, which is contributing to a gradual rebound in the developer job market according to Jason Lengstorf.
• The developer job market will never return to its golden age around 2019, when thoughtfully applying to a decent number of jobs each week would eventually get your resume to the top of the stack and get you hired.
• LLMs make it trivially cheap to spam every job posting with fake resumes and even fake faces on Zoom calls, so hiring managers are overwhelmed by junk and effectively throwing darts at a stack of a thousand resumes.
• Networking is the shortest path to getting hired now: attend conferences and local meetups, contribute to open-source projects, join Discord communities, build things, and share what you are learning to gain visibility.
• The core hiring strategy in an age of AI-faked everything is to 'do human things and be seen doing human things,' because visibly existing as a real person is how you prove legitimacy to employers who want to work with humans.
• AI code generation is a productivity tool comparable to Bootstrap, Tailwind UI, or Shadcn: it makes you faster and does a decent job slamming pieces together, but it does not replace the need for a developer.
• You cannot vibe-code anything beyond a toy; any project requiring maintenance or significant feature development still needs a real developer, which was always the case despite claims that coding was over.
• Company messaging has shifted from 'AI replaces developers' to 'the strongest devs leverage AI effectively,' which Lengstorf sees as a major positive sign that the assault on developers' professional legitimacy is easing.

Questions & Answers

Q: Will AI replace software developers?

No. Jason Lengstorf argues the 'AI is going to replace devs' hype is over. AI coding tools are useful and impressive, comparable to Bootstrap, Tailwind UI, or Shadcn, and they make developers faster, but they do not replace the need for a developer. Anything beyond a toy, or anything requiring maintenance or significant feature development, still needs a real developer. Company messaging has already shifted away from replacement claims toward devs leveraging AI effectively.

Q: Why did so many developers get laid off?

According to Lengstorf, many CEOs greatly overestimated the impact of AI coding tools and, believing AI could do the work, laid off too many developers. The promise was that AI would let companies avoid paying developers. That promise did not hold up, and companies are now trying to rehire the developers they let go, which is helping the job market start to rebound.

Q: Is the developer job market recovering in 2025?

Lengstorf, sharing his personal observation rather than a labor economist's analysis, says he is seeing a lot more jobs open and expects that trend to continue, with the number steadily increasing over the past year or so. However, he believes the market will never return to its previous state, and getting interviews and getting hired will remain difficult even as more roles open up.

Q: Why is it so hard to get a developer job interview now?

LLMs have made it possible to turbo-spam every single job posting with very low effort. Applicants can send huge volumes of applications, sometimes with fake resumes and even fake voices and faces on Zoom calls, all cheaply on free tiers. As a result, hiring managers are completely overwhelmed by junk; a single role can attract a thousand resumes, half of them garbage, so they end up essentially throwing darts at the wall.

Q: How do you get a developer job in the age of AI resume spam?

Lengstorf's answer is to network and become an active part of the community. Go to conferences and local meetups, contribute to open-source projects, join Discord communities, hang out with communities like freeCodeCamp, help people, and share what you are learning and building. Visibility is key. Every person he knows who was active in the community has a job. It may take a year or more, but he promises it works and yields stronger jobs than resume blasting.

Q: What does 'do human things, be seen doing human things' mean?

It is Lengstorf's core strategy for standing out when AI can fake video, photos, resumes, voices, and faces. Since anyone with a GPU can digitally fake nearly everything, the way to prove you exist and are legitimate is to publicly and visibly do human things: meet people for real, talk to people for real, build things and share them, and be supportive. This human visibility is the shortest path to getting hired in the current market.

Q: Can you vibe-code a real production app with AI?

No. Lengstorf says you can slam some code together with AI and it does a pretty good job, but you cannot vibe-code anything beyond a toy, and in fact you never could. Anything that requires maintenance or significant feature development still demands a real developer. The tools are impressive and can do a lot, but the promise that they would fully replace developers has not proven true.

Q: How has company messaging about AI and developers changed?

Lengstorf describes a major shift. Companies used to pitch CEOs on the idea that AI meant they no longer had to pay developers, saying coding was over and devs were done. That message is now gone, aside from a few CEOs whose paychecks require them to believe it. The new message is that the strongest future developers are the ones with the right tools to leverage AI effectively, which he views as a positive sign that the attack on developers' legitimacy is easing.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Jason Lengstorf, a 22-year industry veteran who worked at IBM and Netlify and now runs CodeTV, argues the hype that AI would replace developers is over. Many CEOs overestimated AI coding tools and laid off too many devs, whom they are now trying to rehire as the market rebounds.

• The job market is opening more roles, but it will never return to its 2019 golden age. LLMs let applicants turbo-spam every posting with low-effort, often fake resumes, so hiring managers are buried in junk and interviews remain hard to land despite more openings.

• Lengstorf's advice is to network relentlessly and be visibly human: attend meetups and conferences, contribute to open source, and share your work. He frames AI as a productivity tool like Bootstrap or Shadcn that speeds coding but cannot replace developers on anything beyond a toy project.