Developers are not going to be unemployed thanks to AI
As artificial intelligence advances, debates about widespread job losses have reached a peak—yet a new study has revealed unexpected findings. This was reported by Zamin.uz.
Contrary to common belief, programmers—often assumed to be among the first to be replaced by AI—are actually emerging as one of the most stable and in-demand groups in the tech industry. This insight comes from a comprehensive analysis conducted by venture firm SignalFire.
Amid widespread layoffs in the industry, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported in May 2024 that job cuts had reached their highest level in recent years, with AI cited for the first time as a primary driver of declining employment.
However, SignalFire analysts looked beyond layoffs, examining hiring trends across millions of employees and over a thousand companies. They found that staffing patterns at major tech firms are shifting.
According to the study, while overall hiring at giants like Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, NVIDIA, Tesla, and Uber dropped by 25% compared to 2019, engineering vacancies declined by only 11%. This suggests demand for programmers is falling much more slowly than in other fields.
Notably, by 2025, programmers made up 55% of new hires at large corporations—up from 46% in 2019.
In the startup segment, the situation is even more positive: newly formed tech companies hired 6% more engineers in 2024 than in 2019. As Asher Bentok, head of research at SignalFire, emphasized, if AI were truly replacing programmers, demand for this profession should have sharply declined.
In practice, AI coding assistants are not displacing specialists—they are boosting their productivity. Opinions among industry experts remain divided.
For example, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years. In contrast, the company’s chief economist, Peter McCrorie, stated he has not observed rising unemployment among programmers so far. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang takes an even firmer stance.
He believes the current evolution of AI agents will not reduce the number of engineers—it will make them more valuable. According to Huang, as AI tools become integrated at NVIDIA, programmers have begun working more intensively, because automating code writing frees up time for them to focus on innovation and product development.
