Travel Agents Took 10 Years to Collapse. Developers Are 3 Years In
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The notion that software developers are on the cusp of becoming obsolete, much like travel agents did a decade ago, has sparked a lively debate. While some commenters nostalgically yearn for the personalized services of travel agents, others point out that niche, local agencies still thrive, and that hiring personal assistants can replicate similar benefits. The discussion takes a critical turn as some users scrutinize the original article's author, suggesting that their writing is fueled by AI-generated content and a sense of urgency around LLM adoption. As one commenter astutely observes, the real value lies in specialized services, not generic ones.
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Dec 27, 2025 at 3:02 PM EST
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We’ve used some location-specific agencies that have been really good to work with, but you first have to find them. I’d happily pay a premium to someone who would work globally. Do such things exist?
I need someone to spend a few days every couple of years to plan a holiday, not someone who is available several hours a day to read my emails for me.
Don’t ask me how those people are still being born, it don’t make a ton of sense to me.
> I also teach workshops on AI development for engineering teams
So yet another article playing on FOMO about how urgent it is to get in tune with LLM usage written by someone who teaches how to use LLM.
From the perspective of the customer you were a lamb to the slaughter. They could find you the best option, or they could just sell you the itinerary that made them the biggest commission. Finding an honest travel agent was a bit like finding an honest stock broker or car salesman.
Airlines putting their availability online was easy (it was already digitized) and they didn't really have much reason not to do it. They had little loyalty to the agents, and from their perspective a booking coming through priceline was no different than a booking coming from an agent. Customer satisfaction was higher because the customer felt like they had more control and transparency.
I’ve been a full-stack web programmer at five different companies over the last fifteen years, big and small, e-commerce and B2B, junior to senior to staff, and that has never fully described my responsibilities.
It's incredible that 15 years later, all software devs still have a job, but this time they're going to be out of job due to AI.
Let me guess: in 15 years software devs are going to be fine but they'll all be out of their job soon because of, dunno, quantum computing maybe?
What does the author mean by total jobs? 132k > 74k is -44%.
I don't use Opus, but I use Sonnet 4.5 and ChatGpt 5.1, which are only a bit down the chart.
in my daily experience, these tools only can help with certain tasks - scaffolding crud, writing tests, explaining how this or that part of the code works, are three that come to mind.
But a mature piece of software has usually graduated to a point that it has numerous subsystems, layers and integrations that crosstalk with each other in often hacky ways. And my work is smack dab inth middle of that. Writing a feature or fixing a bug in that soup, I have found, is something that the best AIs will slow you down with as often as they speed you up.
And that doesn't even take into consideration that a very large part of my job is just defining what the bug or feature is, before I can even begin to code. And when I'm done with the coding, lets keep in mind the very human, error-prone processes known as "code review" and "deploy to customers"
They'd rather ask me to talk to the AI for them and pay me money to do so. Heck one of my cousins offered me $5 to edit a photo with AI tools? It's a 1000% markup for clicking 4 buttons.
I can't square this with the alleged tidal wave of non-tech people replacing SWEs with AI. Non-tech people largely refuse to use the technology right in front of them to improve their productivity. They'd rather ask me to spend 20 seconds on a task and pay me to do so.
More likely than an SWE crash is an SWE dispersal. Lots of non-tech fields have automation opportunities that haven't been seized upon since one can make $500k risk free in FAANG.
If that goes away, I'd start a consulting business and ruthlessly automate Excel-based business processes with AI coding agents.
It takes me half an hour to vibe code a proof of concept web scraper and immediately demonstrate value to someone now willing to throw money at me to maintain it for them at insane profit margins since I've replaced a human repeatedly clicking on things.
We use AI a lot at work, and the developers are vastly better at getting AI to do what we need than the non-developers. AI is a tool, and like any tool, it takes effort to learn how to use it effectively. And so far, the skills to use AI effectively are something I’ve only seen in software developers.
I don’t think product people are going to replace devs. Ever. I agree that I think a dispersal is more likely than an outright crash.
It is clear top executives share his perspective given the massive layoffs. But survival is a marathon not a sprint, and there’s a lot of race left to run.
The only thing 3 years in to a collapse are low effort blogs like this.
Sure, if you count "Google forced an AI-generated overview into my search, and I clicked on 'read more' once." as LLM usage.
> Even more astoundingly, according to the Stack Overflow developer survey LLM adoption in software engineering went from 0% in 2022 to 84% (!) in 2025
This simply isn't true. The 84% is for "using or planning to use AI tools in their development process". That's not about LLMs, not specifically about software engineering, and not even a "currently using"! Look at something like "Yes, I use AI agents at work daily" and the real figure is closer to 14%. So how do people use it? Not to write anything, but primarily as a search engine!
I don't doubt that AI is going to change software development. But let's be real about it: they aren't going to collapse the software developer industry any more than the invention of the microwave collapsed the restaurant industry.