I'm pretty close to those tech layoffs — half my social circle works for a couple of tech companies and been on the chopping block — and those have absolutely nothing to do with AI. I promise you. Its greedy shareholders getting nervous when they see other companies downsizing and then deciding to literally copy them out of fear that the other companies know something they don't. That's prettymuch it. No secret AI conspiracy, I can promise you that. Its horrible and disgusting but nothing about it is tied to AI.

AI isn't a thing that is talked about very seriously in those tech teams; its not making any sort of serious entry into the industry yet that I can see — check tech subreddits and they're not concerned about it yet. There's a clear reason why — "No code" tools have actually existed for decades already — and AI is competing with those, not with developer jobs. In short: this threat has been made against our jobs for about 2-3 decades already and never actually replaced many jobs.

>the idea that fewer coders with AI tools can be more effective then more coders without them probably is a factor that companies are taking into account.

I'm a coder and the sorts of tools you're talking about aren't really making any sort of entry into our industry yet. Closest to that is probably Github Copilot and that's not exactly replacing developers at any noticeable scale.

Its going to replace a lot of our basic tasks very soon when it gets a tighter integration with our tooling as you say. I am excited about that and welcome it. I think the conclusion that everyone then draws — that its going to upend the industry by replacing most developer jobs — is a huge huge huge leap of faith tbqh.

I personally believe that AI has just as much potential to CREATE dev jobs because if AI can make us more productive all that will change is that we will build better more secure software. And more side projects will actually get built — which those companies can sell. I think people outside our industry don't seem to realise any code project has a nearly infinite backlog and if we can chew through tasks in that pipeline more efficiently then that is only going to make us MORE attractive hires for companies — rather than cutting jobs I think companies will see more reason to hire more of us since we will be that much more productive and delivering value. Those who assume it will replace us I think don't really understand software development and the fact that its never really "done".