The Great Programmer Extinction Event

Artificial Intelligence has reached human-level coding ability in 2025. GPT-5 and its competitors can write, test, and deploy code faster than 100 programmers combined. The 15 million software developers worldwide face the biggest employment crisis in tech history.

What This Means for BTech Students

Your degree is becoming worthless. Companies are firing senior developers and replacing them with AI. A task that took a programmer 2 weeks now takes AI 30 seconds. Why would any company hire humans at 50x the cost?

A programmer’s salary in India: 8-15 lakhs per year
AI subscription cost: 20 dollars per month = 240 dollars per year

Companies are doing the math. You’ve already lost.

The Timeline of Job Deaths

2025: AI tools become mandatory in all software companies. Freelancers collapse first.
2026: Mass layoffs accelerate. Junior developers simply can’t compete. Bootcamp graduates find zero jobs.
2027: Entire development departments become 1-2 AI operators per 100 previous developers.
2028: Only senior architects remain, managing AI systems. Everyone else is unemployed.
2029: Even senior roles shrink. Most development is now 100% AI-driven.

What Skills Actually Matter Now

Prompt engineering: Learn to command AI
AI system design: Understand what AI can and can’t do
Business strategy: The one thing AI can’t replace
AI ethics: Companies need someone to manage liability
Data science with AI: The last frontier

Why Even These Won’t Save You

When everyone learns prompt engineering, it becomes worthless. Supply and demand. 1 million prompt engineers competing for jobs that don’t exist.

The only secure career is becoming so specialized that AI can’t touch you yet. But AI improves every 6 months. Your specialization expires before you finish learning it.

What You Should Do RIGHT NOW

Stop learning traditional coding. Seriously.
Switch to non-tech fields while you can
Learn to sell and negotiate – that’s human work
Start your own business before AI replaces employees everywhere
Consider Government jobs – they move slowly on automation
Focus on management and strategy skills
Get certified in fields with regulatory barriers to AI
Build your personal brand before it’s too late

The Brutal Truth Nobody Wants to Say

The programming jobs you were promised don’t exist anymore. Your college placement guarantee is a lie. Companies over-hired in 2024 expecting growth that AI made obsolete.

Thousands of developers will retrain into different fields. Those who wait until 2027 will be competing with millions of desperate workers. Your advantage window is closing NOW.

India’s IT boom is over. The 2000s-2020 miracle of Indian programmers becoming millionaires won’t repeat. AI destroyed that opportunity in one year.

Senior developers with 10+ years experience are already panicking. You’re the most vulnerable – you just completed your education right as the job market collapsed.

The Question You Need to Answer

Are you going to:
a) Hope the crisis doesn’t happen and graduate into unemployment
b) Panic and freeze like everyone else
c) Actually change your strategy starting today

Choose wisely. In 3 years, this post will seem optimistic.