Mastodawn

Chris Routh (He/Him)

So what are the career options for a senior engineer in the IT industry that avoid AI entirely in 2025?

I'm tired, boss. Tired of keeping my mouth closed about it at work. Tired of waking up angry that my employer and industry at large are:

* Pushing hard to adopt an absolute crap technology with very low accuracy and consistency, which additionally has had noticeable affects on certain co-workers ability to understand a problem and picture the solution (those who seem to be offloading their thinking to AI over the last year have notably degraded in these areas)
* Supporting the enrichment of billionaire fascists who want to manipulate and control the truth and control the population to make themselves richer.
* Supporting the re-ignition of coal power plants and burning significant amounts of power and water to fuel these inefficient garbage bots.
* Generally increasing affordability problems on all fronts while also accelerating the climate disaster that will be central to my sons future.

I wake up every day angry, stressed, and mournful that I am contributing the destruction of my son's future while begrudgingly going to work in the name of his present; in order to keep him clothed, fed, and try to eek out some chance of a better financial future for our family.

I'm not sure how much longer I can keep helping drive the engine of the very destruction I want to put an end to.

There must be some companies out there doing things without AI and making technology choices that are moral. They can't all be sycophants feeding the investor greed machine.. help me find them. I need to know there are some options.

Hugo Slabbert ⚠️Nov 16

@Routhinator Valve noticeably didn't have any mention of AI in their hardware announcements. That cannot be an accident.

@hugo @Routhinator then again, valve has only what, 300 people directly employed? (yes, they invest a lot in other projects)

it serves as a point that there are companies doing good stuff (quite a lot actually), but its not like they are recruiting heavily.

Most importantly, I think the right answer is to build relationships with peers who are themselves interested in doing actual good things. Take for example a peek at https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ludics-guide-to-getting-software-engineering-jobs/

Ludic's Guide To Getting Software Engineering Jobs — Ludicity

Steve Purcell Nov 17

@brahms @hugo @Routhinator I think if you stay out of the VC-funded and bigtech spaces, there's not going to be anyone pushing AI. It's tied to hypergrowth pressure, collective delusion and herd mentality there. Valve is independent and just has no need to shill AI.

schrotthaufen Nov 19

@sanityinc @brahms @hugo @Routhinator Sadly not true. I’m experiencing this first hand right now. A substantial number of my smart colleagues bought into the hype, and the execs suffer from a metric shitton of FOMO, which translates to a lot of “We should waste compute on LLMs where other solutions (even ML ones) would be more efficient, and/or cheaper.”

William Oldwin Nov 21

@sanityinc @brahms @hugo @Routhinator Think again. I work in a capital-intensive segment of the transport industry and the information technology leadership in my workplace have gone all in on pushing 'AI' to 'improve efficiency'. Businesses of all descriptions are falling for this.

Compromise_bi_flag

@willegible @sanityinc @brahms @hugo @Routhinator +1 to this; I don't work in "big tech" but the fervor for AI is killing what little will I have to stick around.

@hugo @Routhinator Valve does however allow AI games and Valve profits off of them:

"after spending the last few months learning more about this space and talking with game developers, we are making changes to how we handle games that use AI technology. This will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use it."

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3862463747997849618

Steamworks Development - AI Content on Steam - Steam News

Back in June, we shared that while our goal continues to be shipping as many games as possible on Steam, we needed some time to learn about the fast-moving and legally murky space of AI technology, especially given Steam's worldwide reach. Today, after spending the last few months learning more about this space and talking with game developers, we are making changes to how we handle games that use AI technology. This will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use it.

@sylvie @hugo @Routhinator True, but they are also at least _requiring_ disclosure about AI usage in games [1] _and_ issuing refunds as requested when games violate that requirement even on big titles [2].

1: https://www.pcmag.com/news/steam-to-require-ai-disclosures-on-game-submissions
2: https://gamerant.com/steam-refunds-black-ops-7-player-due-to-games-ai-usage/

Preston Maness ☭Nov 16

>I'm not sure how much longer I can keep helping drive the engine of the very destruction I want to put an end to.

That feeling drove me out of the tech world entirely. I'm a nursing student now. 🤷

Shadowbottle Nov 20

@aspensmonster @Routhinator ++ I went into instructional design lol

myrmepropagandist Nov 16

Can you just do it the right way and *say* it was AI. I know some people doing that.

@futurebird @Routhinator
Doing it the right way and saying it was AI doesn't really address most (if any) of the objections; better than not, but far from ideal

myrmepropagandist Nov 17

@sabik @Routhinator

It doesn't really do what they say. This can only go on for so long.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien Nov 17

@futurebird @Routhinator oh wow the mental breakdown. Attribute all the brain time you poured in a project to the worst tech of all times... I would not accept I think.

vv 💫 [follow my new artist profile!]Nov 20

@futurebird @Routhinator a lot of times the work is planned at too high of a level for this to be possible. you're just doing a small part of the work and making a drastic change to the architecture isn't feasible.

This is probably going to be about as helpful as a brick, but the only answer I see is:

Live beneath our means
Save enough money to be able to afford to be jobless for a while
Tell your boss "NO," and let chips fall where they may
Coordinate with other like-minded people

I dunno. I've been out of I.T. for a dozen years. Not sure how you guys are staying sane right now, but I'm pulling for you! 💗

Morgan ⚧️Nov 16

@rl_dane @Routhinator I think in every industry, the options are basically "work for an evil corporation" or "start/join a co-op"
On the bright side, when the options are "pay an evil corporation" or "pay a co-op," most of us will choose the latter whenever possible

gloria dei Nov 16

@raphaelmorgan @rl_dane @Routhinator I work for a company that develops and supports free, open-source software. It's not evil, so far as I can tell. It's not a co-op, though I could be paid more working at a huge tech company (also with much higher stress level). And we eschew AI, at least so far.

So options may be few and far between, but they exist.

@rl_dane @Routhinator this.

personally I see no other way anymore other than niche companies and it's going to get worse.

@sushee @Routhinator

Yeah. 😓

Jocelynephiliac

@rl_dane @Routhinator thats basically what I did. When I was laid off in 2024 I looked at our investments and made a case to my wife for staying unemployed

@Routhinator maybe see if some stodgy firm in a heavily regulated industry is hiring to manage their legacy tech?

Poloniousmonk Nov 16

This guy runs an ethical consulting firm:

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity

@Uair @Routhinator

Hilarious ... here's just one quote (a gem) from this post:

"This isn't a recipe for disaster, it's a cookbook for someone looking to prepare a twelve course fucking catastrophe."

Such a breath of fresh air.

Preston Maness ☭Nov 17

@bjb @Uair @Routhinator

>Grifters, on the other hand, wield the omnitool that they self-aggrandizingly call 'politics'[2]. That is to say, it turns out that the core competency of smiling and promising people things that you can't actually deliver is *highly transferable*.

Preston Maness ☭Nov 17

@bjb @Uair @Routhinator

>I finally understand why some of my friends feel that they *have* to be in leadership positions, and it is because someone needs to wrench the reins of power from your lizard-person-claws before you drive us all collectively off a cliff, presumably insisting on the way down that the current crisis is best remedied by additional SageMaker spend.

The world needs more folks willing to seize the means^W^W^W wrench the reins of power from these ghouls.

Preston Maness ☭Nov 17

@bjb @Uair @Routhinator

>Listen, *I* would just be some random dude in India if I swapped places with some of my cousins, so I'm going to choose to take that personally and point out that *using the word AI as some roundabout way to sell the labor of people that look like me to foreign governments* is fucked up, you're an unethical monster, and that if you continue to `try { thisBullshit(); }` you are going to `catch (theseHands)`.

So it's just Mechanical Turk all over again. Digital imperialism fucking blows.

Preston Maness ☭Nov 17

@bjb @Uair @Routhinator

>Everyone is talking about Retrieval Augmented Generation, but most companies don't actually have any internal documentation worth retrieving. Fix. Your. Shit.

XD

Preston Maness ☭Nov 17

@bjb @Uair @Routhinator

>Yes, someone needs to figure out what the implications of quantum computing are for cryptography, but I guarantee you that it is not Synergy Greg, who does not have any skill that you can identify other than talking very fast and increasing headcount. Synergy Greg should not be consulted on any important matters, ranging from machine learning operations to tying shoelaces quickly. The last time I spoke to one of the many avatars of Synergy Greg, he insisted that I should invest most of my money into a cryptocurrency called Monero, because "most of these coins are going to zero but the one is going to one". This is the face of corporate AI. Behold its ghastly visage and balk, for it has eyes bloodshot as a demon and is pretending to enjoy cigars.
>
>...
>
>This entire class of person is, to put it simply, abhorrent to right-thinking people. They're an embarrassment to people that are actually making advances in the field, a disgrace to people that know how to sensibly use technology to improve the world, and are also a bunch of tedious know-nothing bastards that should be thrown into Thought Leader Jail until they've learned their lesson, a prison I'm fundraising for. ... I am disgusted that my chosen profession brings me so close to these people, and that's why I study so hard - I am seized by the desperate desire to never have their putrid syllables befoul my ears ever again, and must flee to the company of the righteous, who contribute to OSS and think that talking about Agile all day is an exercise for aliens that read a book on human productivity.
>
>I just got back from a trip to a substantially less developed country, and really *living* in a country, even for a little bit, where I could *see* how many lives that money could improve, all being poured down the Microsoft Fabric drain, it just grinds my gears like you wouldn't believe. I swear to God, I am going to study, write, network, and otherwise *apply force to the problem* until those resources are going to a place where they'll accomplish something for society instead of some grinning clown's wallet.

I like this person.

Preston Maness ☭Nov 17

@bjb @Uair @Routhinator

Excellent reading recommendation. 10/10. Would read again. Would reccomend as a prototypical example of the polemic as a genre.

varx/social Nov 16

@Routhinator I've been pretty public about my distaste for the tech at work. Apparently one of the higher-ups is pretty mad at me for telling other people how to auto-hide Copilot "reviews" on PRs.

I don't think there will be any actual consequences, though.

(Like you, I'm looking for another job, of course.)

Becca 🌳🚀🛀Nov 16

@Routhinator
Contracting - you get to choose your own tools.
Otherwise check out the larger Foss projects and technology NGOs. They are usually a good starting point. Also any industry that is a bit more obscure and slower on uptake on new tech: banking, internal industrial tools, stuff like that. Best of luck.

Thank you for writing this. I feel exactly the same way, but I'm currently out of work, laid off just before the AI-induced stupidity went into high gear. Fellow Canuck here, too.

My brother works for a well-known Linux company, and says that for each engineering job they post, they're getting between 1k and 2k applicants.

Andrei Kucharavy Nov 17

@Routhinator @dabeaz wait until a chain reaction of AI bugs and uncovered edge cases blows the entire online stack apart; charge metric F-ton on money to rebuild it from dust with any for of trust into what you are doing.

David Beazley Nov 17

@andrei_chiffa @Routhinator I'm not sure you could pay me enough to fix someone's broken AI code. For a more modest amount, I'd be more than happy to laugh at it though.

Andrei Kucharavy Nov 17

@dabeaz @Routhinator rewrite from scratch. Nobody would want the uncertainty of having any AI code in their stack after that. Also, like truckloads of money.

Kailas Idavanmuzhi Nov 17

@Routhinator even I need to find one.. 🫠

Tom Ritchford Nov 17

@Routhinator Man, I have no idea (as someone who's been in the field for over 40 years).

I worry if I lose my current job I'll never get another one. And AI is almost directly responsible for my paycheck, even though I don't directly work on it.

Tom Ritchford Nov 17

@Routhinator I should add that no one on my team uses AI, because the codebase is so big that AI gives very bad answers...

@Routhinator How close are you to retirement and do you have dependents?

Sometimes you need to get noise cancelling headphones, hold your nose, and just get stuff done.

If you are younger then start putting out feelers and be careful that your next step is to solid ground

I've done some experiments with AI and I'm often surprised at how good the guesses are, and then not surprised when it totally messes up.

I'll use my own brain, thanks very much. I'll write this code using BDD/TDD and I'll write the docs using Sphinx and PlantUML and I'll be able to tell you with confidence that MY stuff works.

Oh, and take up woodworking or carpentry or plumbing or electrical trades.

Adam Williams Nov 17

@Routhinator I would recommend switching careers into the trades (plumbing, electrical, welding...). Welders make very good money.

Nobody should start a career in tech in 2025; at least not in the United States.

@Routhinator I'm told slop clean up is lucrative but I have no direct experience.

Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)Nov 22

@deech @Routhinator Lucrative, but maddening.

I had a Python project landed on my desk written by a dynamic duo of non-programmer power engineers that thought they could write a comms driver with no design spec and minimal programming experience. The lack of experience makes me wonder if an early ChatGPT also had a "hand" in it.

- The driver spoke to a Siemens S7 PLC system
- It received RFID data from a number of RFID readers
- It married the data up between the two then stuffed it into a database

They decided that threads were the solution, big 1000-line functions that run a `while True:` loop in separate threads. To talk to the Siemens S7 PLC, they used the open-source `snap7` library.

Did they check whether said library was thread safe? Of course not!

I managed to get things to the point where it didn't corrupt memory and worked most of the time, and for a while it became "my" (very much unwanted) baby. I managed to break the monster functions into classes, with some common logic in a base class that meant I could unit test things, and got the code coverage up to something respectable… but to this day, there are things none of us understand about how that monolith of code actually works.

Chris Routh (He/Him)Nov 22

@stuartl @deech that sounds like the ultimate "spaghetti" code, but in this case the noodles are threads.

Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)Nov 22

@Routhinator @deech If only they had used their noodles and done some proper design-work up front, and maybe sought out some advice.

Adam Millerchip Nov 17

@Routhinator I think the uncomfortable conclusion is that it's going to take bold, principled, and lucky people to make those companies 😬

@Routhinator Same problem here, looking at alternative careers I could slide into based on my skills and experience.

Johan Moir (Mastodon)Nov 17

@Routhinator no tip, just a 👏🏻🙏 to you!

Thomas Reed Nov 17

@Routhinator @talkingmoose It’s bad right now. I made the decision to exit from a tech career and start a completely unrelated business.

Those sticking to tech are going to have to ride out this AI nonsense, then ride out the implosion when the AI bubble bursts. There are going to be some rough years ahead. Hopefully, it will get better at some point.

I long for the days when just making something cool that people found useful was enough.

@Routhinator I feel your pain. If I were starting out, I would choose a different career. As it is, I'm in late career mode, so trying to stick it out. I feel sorry for those in early/mid career who are not on board the AI train.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien Nov 17

@Routhinator embedded. Like, very embedded. Stuff with weird RTOS and time critical functions counted in microseconds.

Are you me? Because I feel like you just describe my nightmare from the last year. I worked hard to build skills, and now my company wants me to de-skill and demanding I use the slop machines.

I will follow this thread closely!

Justin Derrick Nov 18

@Routhinator Become a consultant that specializes in fixing AI’s mistakes.

Historically, 40-60% of my work as a consultant was fixing other people’s mistakes, lack of knowledge, refusal to read the documentation, or simply accepting “return code zero!” as the end of their configuration work.

@Routhinator i opened up azure's admin portal y'day for the first time in a while and immediately got an "ai scorecard" for "how well the organisation is using ai" and i think that's it, i think it broke me.

schrotthaufen Nov 19

@Routhinator @mcc My plan is holding out for a few more years, at which point either the bubble has burst, or nobody understands their LLM generated infrastructure anymore. At which point companies will probably come begging for people who actually know what they’re doing to unfuck their stuff. (Kinda like the “become really good at COBOL, and fix code for banks, and insurances” plan b for people who like to code.)

@schrotthaufen @Routhinator See, what I fear in any new job is being asked to fix up someone's old vibe coding, which— unless I'm allowed to simply throw it away and start over with a new thing from scratch— would basically be forcing me to vibe code with extra steps

schrotthaufen Nov 19

@mcc @Routhinator Oh yeah. My assumption is, that at the point the vibe coding victims come groveling, you can refactor with gas, and a zippo, so to speak.

SysAdmin1138 Nov 20

@Routhinator I honestly don't have a good answer here. I also avoided all AI tools. I got laid off last October and every place that got me past the resume-review stage was all in on proving my AI chops.

All of them.

Of which I had zero experience, and minimal willingness to skill up. Some of this is because I came up through Operations so am not actually a Software Engineer — I write code, but employers want people who think halting state problems are cool and have firey opinions on type-safety. Not actually being a SWE meant I had zero luck getting past the very first interview.

So I retired.

SysAdmin1138 Nov 20

@Routhinator What I learned is that if you want to stay employed in the tech industry, you need to find what your AI tolerance is. It's hard to avoid in some coding toolchains, since those are mandated by employers. Maybe look to how companies are using it in their shipped products.