Doubt AI is reducing the need for developers very much, if at all, but the perception of AI very well could be causing some companies and managers to reduce hiring as they believe the hype that LLMs will obsolete most developers.
Then they are going to realize they need more devs for the AI integrations. Tons of work. Most people still think you have to shell out to big tech and ship your data to a third party for an AI integration. My boss, a very sharp architect, had no idea you could run an LLM locally and modify pre trained models etc until I shoved it in the whole groups' face with a chat post of me answering questions on company data with a local LLM. It lit a fire under his ass, that's for sure. Our entire business is based on creating documents and providing interfaces for people to navigate them. Clients were asking for AI and everyone dropped the ball. Something had to be done.
Multiply this happening all over the entirety of industry right now.
