In 2024, the promise seemed crystal clear: AI would write the code, developers would disappear. Google, Amazon, Meta, all of them kept repeating the same line. Two years later, reality tells a very different story. Companies are quietly rehiring the engineers they had laid off, and AI tools cost far more than expected.
I work every day with developer teams in Vietnam who use Claude Code, Cursor, and other AI tools. What I observe on the ground directly contradicts the dominant narrative. AI does not replace good devs. It makes them faster.
- ⚠️ Diminishing returns: AI models are plateauing, ChatGPT 5 changed nothing.
- 📉 Misleading layoffs: 95% of tech job cuts had nothing to do with AI.
- 🏗️ Architecture is irreplaceable: generating code is not the same as building a product.
- 🔥 Backtracking confirmed: Gartner predicts massive rehiring by 2027.
1. AI generates code, not architecture
The first misconception is the most widespread. When someone says "AI codes as well as a dev," they are confusing two distinct jobs. Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that positions labeled "programmer" dropped by 27.5%. "Software developer" positions, on the other hand, barely moved at all.
This distinction is not wordplay. AI excels at typing repetitive code, completing simple functions, generating boilerplate. Building a system that handles load, resists security vulnerabilities, and remains maintainable two years down the line is an entirely different job.
Why isn't vibe coding enough for a serious product?
Fabio Akita tells a revealing story. An amateur developer built a dating app that exploded in popularity. The problem: the database was wide open, with zero protection. Photos, addresses, social security numbers, all of it was accessible without the slightest hacking effort. The database wasn't "hacked." It was simply open.
This dev had followed a tutorial. The app worked on his machine. But he didn't know what he didn't know: security, scalability, testing. AI does not automatically grant those skills. A non-engineer can generate functional snippets of code, but managing architecture, security, and edge cases requires human experience.
That is exactly the difference between an AI prototype and a real maintainable product.
2. Diminishing returns are already visible
The release of ChatGPT 5 was a pivotal moment, but not in the way people expected. On r/cscareerquestions, a thread with over 4,000 upvotes sums up the community sentiment: "The improvements have slowed down considerably. Previous versions brought real leaps. Now the upgrades are small and incremental."
A highly upvoted comment from bluegrassclimber confirms what I see every day: "I'm a fan of these tools with Cursor. Coding is more relaxing. But you can't just be a BA to use them. You need to remain a senior developer to use them properly."
Why are AI models plateauing?
Foreseerx, another contributor, points to the structural limitations of LLMs: their inability to solve non-trivial problems (what can't be Googled, what the model wasn't trained on) and their chronic imprecision. These limitations are not fixable bugs. They stem from the very architecture of language models.
According to a study from MIT, nearly 95% of companies that adopted AI saw no significant productivity gains, despite investing millions. The revolution that was supposed to make engineers obsolete can't even pay for itself.
3. AI-generated code costs more than advertised
The sales pitch promises savings. Reality says otherwise. A study cited by Economy Media shows that engineers using AI tools are 19% slower than without them. AI suggestions looked useful but required time-consuming corrections. Instead of cutting costs as planned, AI increases them.
Alpaca Tech, a channel that programs with AI daily inside a real company, describes the situation bluntly: "Our productivity doubled. On the flip side, my boss, last Monday, literally couldn't work anymore. By 9:30 a.m., he had burned through all Claude Code quotas on the most expensive subscription tier."
How does the AI economy actually hold up?
OpenAI billed 24 billion dollars last year. Net profit: minus 14 billion. The same channel breaks down the circular funding mechanism: Microsoft invests in OpenAI, which spends that money on Azure servers (owned by Microsoft), which books those purchases as revenue for its AI division to justify investing even more in OpenAI.
The money goes around, but no new money comes in. For the global investment in AI to become profitable, it would need to generate over 600 billion dollars in pure profit per year. That is the equivalent of charging 200 dollars per month to every Netflix subscriber.
| Metric | AI Promise | 2026 Reality | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dev productivity | +50% minimum | -19% (METR study) | ↓ reversed |
| Cost per line of code | Divided by 5 | Rising (corrections) | ↓ overcost |
| OpenAI profitability | 2025 | Pushed back to 2030 | ↓ delayed |
| Dev jobs eliminated by AI | 80-90% | ~5% | ↓ overestimated |
| Satisfied companies (MIT) | Majority | 5% | ↓ failure |
SOURCE: cited transcripts + MIT study · Updated 05/2026
4. Tech layoffs were not caused by AI
In 2025, 1.17 million tech workers were laid off. Everyone said "it's AI." Companies said it. The media said it. But according to data analyzed on r/ArtificialIntelligence, only 5% of those layoffs (roughly 55,000 people) were actually linked to AI automation.
The real reason? During COVID, tech companies hired massively, well beyond their actual needs. When the money stopped flowing, they had to correct course. Laying people off because you overhired makes bad press. Laying people off because you're "moving to AI" makes the stock price go up.
Why does Gartner predict a massive return of developers?
Gartner estimates that 50% of companies that cut positions "thanks to AI" will rehire the exact same profiles by 2027. The Microsoft case with Candy Crush developers illustrates the problem perfectly: devs were tasked with building the AI tools that were supposed to replace them, then laid off. On Reddit, the most upvoted comment (3,686 points) sums it up: "Training the new employee before they fire you is way too common."
As raccoonDenier notes with clear-eyed honesty: "A lot of decisions aren't based on the actual quality of AI. It just has to be good enough to convince the non-technical person making the decisions. And that bar is pretty low."
For a detailed look at how AI changes collaboration with developers without replacing them, I published a full analysis on the topic of AI agents versus developers.
5. Companies are already backtracking
The reversal goes beyond numbers. It shows up in concrete decisions. Embark Studios, the studio behind Arc Raiders, replaced most of its AI voices with real actors after launch. CEO Patrick Söderlund admits it without hesitation: "A real professional actor is better than AI. That's just how it is."
Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian Studios (Baldur's Gate 3), had to publish a lengthy statement clarifying that his 72 artists (including 23 concept artists) would not be replaced by AI. The studio uses AI to "throw ideas at the wall and see where the wall is," as one widely shared Reddit comment put it. The real artists then decide the color and shape.
How does this trend apply to software development?
The parallel with software development is direct. AI is useful for exploring, prototyping, and speeding up repetitive tasks. It is not useful for replacing business understanding, project leadership, or accountability for the final result.
The future belongs to augmented developers, not replaced ones.
I see it every week with my teams in Vietnam. A small, well-organized senior team assisted by AI can compete with a European team twice its size and three times its cost. AI is not killing outsourcing, it strengthens it when the team knows how to use it. The winning equation remains simple: skilled devs, boosted by AI, at the right price-to-quality ratio.
On ai-first.fr, I regularly document how AI is transforming software production on the tools and workflows side. The takeaway is the same: AI accelerates, it does not replace.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can AI replace a junior developer in 2026?
AI can indeed absorb some of the tasks that used to be assigned to juniors: generating simple code, writing basic unit tests, producing boilerplate. What a junior trained solely by AI lacks is the understanding of errors they cannot see: security, scalability, maintenance. A Stanford study actually shows a 20% drop in junior hiring in tech, but senior positions remain stable.
Which AI tools do developers actually use every day?
The most widely used tools among professional devs are Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot. They mainly serve for autocompletion, boilerplate generation, and solution discovery. Experienced devs find them useful for repetitive tasks, but none of these tools can handle an entire project on their own, from system design to deployment.
Why are companies rehiring developers after laying them off?
Gartner predicts that 50% of companies that cut tech positions "for AI" will rehire the same profiles by 2027. The main reason: AI-generated code produces massive technical debt. Corrections consume more time than writing code manually, and production bugs increase without qualified human oversight.
Is vibe coding a threat to professional developers?
Vibe coding allows non-technical people to produce functional prototypes. For rapid prototyping, it is useful. For building a product that handles thousands of users, sensitive data, and regular updates, it is a major risk. The market increasingly distinguishes AI prototypes from real maintainable products.
Is outsourcing threatened by AI?
It is the opposite. AI makes skilled offshore teams even more competitive. A senior Vietnamese team that masters Claude Code and Cursor delivers faster, at a reasonable cost, with solid technical quality. Outsourcing is not threatened by AI: it is strengthened when the team knows how to use it properly.
Vidéos YouTube
- Why Companies Are Quietly Rehiring Software Engineers · Economy Media
- Will AI replace programmers? · WiseCuts (Fabio Akita)
- Programming with AI is a BUBBLE (and it's bursting) · Alpaca Tech
- AI Is Coming for Developers… They Said · Lama Dev
- LA IA TE VA A REEMPLAZAR como Programador · Alfredo Cano Dev
- Macht KI die Gaming-Branche kaputt? · MDR Aktuell
Discussions Reddit
- Candy Crush Developers Replaced By AI Tools They Were Told To Build · r/gaming
- ChatGPT 5 barely an improvement, AI won't replace software engineers · r/cscareerquestions
- The "AI is replacing software engineers" narrative was a lie (MIT study) · r/ArtificialInteligence
- Arc Raiders replacing AI voice lines with real actors · r/gaming
- Larian Studios CEO responds to GenAI criticism · r/gaming
- Larian CEO: not replacing teams with AI · r/pcgaming
