I'm not worried about the 20-something. I'm worried for the 40-year-old

I’m not worried about the 20-something entering the industry today. I’m worried for the 40-year-old already here.

Whenever the impact of AI on jobs comes up, the concern normally lands on the junior engineers. Someone who’s just a few short years into their journey into development, right as AI starts to eat away at engineering as a whole. It feels like the cruellest timing.

But I’m not sure that’s how it will play out. A few short years is not a career, it’s a start. Asking a 20-something to change career direction is not a huge ask, and most will pivot without much drama. They haven’t had time to build their career identity around their skills.

But for the 40-year-old, it is an entirely different proposition. They are halfway through a career in software development. They likely have a mortgage, dependents and a title to protect. They are now being advised to pivot aggressively into something nobody can clearly describe. It’s less a skills problem, and more a sunk-cost problem, and sunk costs are emotional.

Nobody is going to retrain our 40-year-old engineer. There is no industry best practice or programme for this. The people best placed to help are the ones under the same pivoting pressure.

So here’s what I say to people in this situation. You need to play to your strengths. The thing you have that the 20-something and AI do not, is experience. You’ve watched three platform migrations go wrong and know why. You can smell a bad project manager, but you also know what to do about it. You know why a definition of success is important and the consequences of not having one. You know which shortcuts cost nothing and which are likely to become tomorrow’s tech debt.

You’ve watched three platform migrations go wrong and know why.

AI is remarkable at churning out code. But it has no risk aversion - it has no concept of responsibility, accountability or consequences. That judgement is yours and it is not something you can prompt for, it is something you accumulate over twenty years of being in the room.

The 20-something loses a few years but AI gives them the potential to leapfrog into complex code generation. They have the opportunity to grow with the new technology. But for the 40-year-old, they are in danger of losing the career they have spent years building.

I know who I am most concerned about.