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AI and the future of work: What life will look like in 2030 and beyond

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Gerda Decio
Gerda Decio

I still remember the first time I asked ChatGPT to help me debug a piece of code. I was skeptical—how could a chatbot understand the mess I'd created? But it did. Not perfectly, but well enough to point me in the right direction. That moment stuck with me because I realized something had fundamentally shifted.

As someone who's spent years writing code, reviewing pull requests, and debugging production issues at 2 AM, I've developed a particular relationship with my craft. And honestly? Watching AI evolve over the past couple of years has been equal parts exciting and unsettling.

What I'm Actually Seeing Right Now

Let me be real with you. In my day-to-day work, AI has already changed how I operate:

The good stuff:

  • I use AI to rubber-duck debug problems faster than talking to myself
  • Boilerplate code that used to take 30 minutes now takes 5
  • When I'm stuck on a regex pattern (because let's be honest, who remembers regex?), AI saves me from Stack Overflow rabbit holes
  • Writing documentation has become less painful—I draft, AI helps polish

The not-so-good stuff:

  • I've caught AI confidently suggesting code with subtle bugs
  • Sometimes I accept suggestions without fully understanding them (bad habit I'm working on)
  • There's a weird guilt when AI writes something clever that I couldn't have thought of

This is where we are in 2026. Now let's talk about where I think we're heading.

Work in 5 Years: My Honest Predictions

Coding Will Change, But Developers Won't Disappear

I've seen the "developers will be obsolete" takes on X. I don't buy it—at least not in the next decade.

Here's why: AI is incredible at generating code, but it doesn't understand your codebase's history, the weird business logic your PM explained in a 45-minute call, or why that one function is named handleLegacyEdgeCase_DONT_TOUCH. Context is everything, and humans still hold that context.

What I do think will happen:

  • Junior developer roles will shift. Instead of writing basic CRUD operations, entry-level devs will focus on reviewing AI-generated code and understanding systems
  • Senior developers become more like architects and AI wranglers—directing AI tools, catching their mistakes, and making judgment calls
  • The gap between "someone who can prompt AI" and "someone who deeply understands software" will become very apparent when things break

New Jobs I Think Will Emerge

Based on what I'm already seeing in the industry:

  • AI Code Reviewers — People who specialize in auditing AI-generated code for security issues, performance problems, and maintainability
  • Prompt Engineers (yes, it's a real thing) — Crafting effective instructions for AI systems is becoming a skill in itself
  • Human-AI Integration Specialists — Figuring out where AI fits in existing workflows without breaking everything
  • AI Ethics Officers — Someone needs to decide what AI should and shouldn't do in your organization

Life in 10 Years: The Bigger Picture

Okay, let's zoom out beyond just work.

Healthcare Gets Personal

We've all heard stories of people bouncing between specialists for months before getting a proper diagnosis. In 10 years? I believe AI will catch patterns doctors might miss—not replacing them, but giving them better tools. Imagine your health data continuously analyzed for early warning signs. We're already seeing this with Apple Watch detecting heart issues.

Education Finally Catches Up

I learned to code from YouTube tutorials and Stack Overflow because my formal education couldn't keep up with industry changes. Kids growing up now will have AI tutors that adapt to how they learn. Struggling with recursion? The AI explains it differently until it clicks. This excites me more than almost anything else.

The "Smart" Everything Era

I'm already yelling at my smart home when the lights don't cooperate. In 10 years, these systems will actually be smart. Your home will learn your patterns, your city will optimize traffic, and your car will be better at driving than you are.

Skills Our Kids Actually Need

This is where I get a bit passionate. I think about what skills would have helped me most in my career, and what will matter even more going forward.

1. Learning How to Learn

This sounds cliché, but hear me out. The specific technologies I learned in university? Mostly obsolete now. But the ability to pick up new languages, frameworks, and tools quickly? That's carried me through every job. AI will accelerate change even more. The people who thrive will be the ones who can adapt.

2. Asking Good Questions

This is underrated. When I work with AI tools, the quality of the output depends entirely on how well I can articulate what I need. This applies to working with humans too. The ability to break down problems, identify what you're actually trying to solve, and communicate clearly—that's not going away.

3. Knowing When AI Is Wrong

I've seen AI hallucinate function names, invent APIs that don't exist, and write code that looks perfect but fails spectacularly in production. You need to understand the fundamentals deeply enough to catch these mistakes. Don't outsource your judgment.

4. Creativity and Weird Ideas

AI is trained on existing data—it's essentially a remix machine. The truly novel ideas, the unexpected connections, the "what if we tried this crazy thing?"—that's still us. Encourage kids to be weird, to make art, to combine things that don't obviously go together.

5. Working With People

Ironic that as AI gets better, human skills matter more. The best engineers I've worked with aren't necessarily the best coders—they're the ones who can navigate team dynamics, explain complex concepts simply, and build trust with stakeholders. No AI is doing that anytime soon.

6. Ethics and Thinking About Consequences

Who decides what AI should and shouldn't do? Who's responsible when it goes wrong? These aren't just philosophical questions anymore—they're becoming everyday decisions. We need people who think carefully about implications, not just "can we build it" but "should we?"

My Honest Take on All This

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sometimes anxious about the future. When I see AI write code that would've taken me an hour, there's a small voice asking "what's my value then?"

But then I remember: I'm not just a code-writing machine. I understand the problem. I know the trade-offs. I can talk to the stakeholder who doesn't know what an API is and translate their needs into technical solutions. I can mentor junior devs through the frustration of their first production bug. I can make judgment calls when requirements are ambiguous.

That's the stuff that matters, and it's the stuff that will keep mattering.

The future isn't about humans versus AI. It's about humans with AI, doing things neither could do alone. The developers who embrace this—who stay curious, keep learning, and remember that technology serves people—they'll do just fine.

The ones who refuse to adapt, who think their current skills will last forever, or who let AI do all the thinking for them? That's who should be worried.

I'm curious about your experience with AI in your work. Has it changed how you operate? What skills do you think will matter most? Drop me a message—I love hearing different perspectives on this.