AI agents increasingly write routine code, while the developer sets the task, checks the result and is responsible for the system as a whole. The profession stays, but the center of the work moves from typing code to design and review.
Professions and AI
IT and tech
IT and tech: 9 professions. What AI does, what stays with the person and what to learn.
Breaking into the profession has gotten harder: the simple tasks beginners used to learn on are increasingly done by AI. The odds are better for people who learn alongside AI but understand every line they submit.
AI now writes test cases and automated tests from a description, while the tester decides what to check and finds bugs where the script didn't expect any. A new area of work: testing the AI features inside the product itself.
There are fewer traditional sysadmin openings: some of the work is moving to cloud services and to DevOps engineers, and routine tasks are being automated. Employers need an admin who writes automations with AI and is responsible for access, backups and security.
AI writes configurations, pipelines and infrastructure descriptions on request, while the engineer owns reliability, cost and security. A new part of the job: running AI services in production and monitoring them.
AI writes analysis code, charts and rough conclusions on request, while the data scientist owns framing the question, data quality and the honesty of the conclusions. Demand for the profession is growing: companies need people who build AI into their work with data.
AI speeds up both defense and attacks: threat analysis goes faster, while phishing and fakes have become more convincing. More specialists are needed, and there's a new area of work: protecting AI systems themselves.
AI drafts instructions and help articles fast, so the value shifts to accuracy, structure and verification. Documentation is now read by both people and AI assistants that answer customers from it.
Routine requests such as a password reset or an email setup are increasingly handled by chatbots and self-service, so Tier 1 support as it exists today is shrinking. The work that stays is in Tier 2 support and in setting up and running those bots.
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