I have been in software for 20 years, and was just about to quit 2-3 years ago because of how mundane things became. And now I am actually loving it again because of AI. I'd say, AI writes 95% of my code, and I use it for 75% of the decisions during working on a project.
I am under MUCH more pressure to deliver more in shorter periods of time, with just me involved in several layers of decision making, rather than having a whole team. Which may sound scary, but it pays the bills. At one company I contract with, I now have 2 PMs; where I am the only dev on a production app with users, shipping new features every few days (rather than weeks).
It feels more like performance art, than it even feels like software development at this point. I am still waiting for some of my features to come crashing prod down in fantastic fashion, being paged at 3am in the morning; debugging for 12 hours straight because AI has built such a gigantic footgun for me.... but it has yet to happen. If anything I am doing less work than before - being paid a little more, and the companies working with me have built a true dependency on my skills to both ship, maintain and implement stuff.
I am under MUCH more pressure to deliver more in shorter periods of time, with just me involved in several layers of decision making, rather than having a whole team. Which may sound scary, but it pays the bills. At one company I contract with, I now have 2 PMs; where I am the only dev on a production app with users, shipping new features every few days (rather than weeks).
It feels more like performance art, than it even feels like software development at this point. I am still waiting for some of my features to come crashing prod down in fantastic fashion, being paged at 3am in the morning; debugging for 12 hours straight because AI has built such a gigantic footgun for me.... but it has yet to happen. If anything I am doing less work than before - being paid a little more, and the companies working with me have built a true dependency on my skills to both ship, maintain and implement stuff.