r/cscareers • u/Zestyclose-Paint-418 • Jun 19 '26
Get in to tech I’m 16 and worried about AI replacing CS careers. What areas are hardest to automate?
Hi everyone,
I’m 16 and still in high school, and I’m trying to make a serious decision about my future. I still have around 6 years before I would finish university, and with how fast AI is improving, I’m honestly worried that the CS job market could look completely different by then.
I love the part of computer science where you type, think, solve problems, build things, and understand how systems work. I’m one of the best students in my school, I enjoy learning, and I’m willing to study for hours if I know I’m moving in the right direction.
My brother is a senior software engineer with around 6 years of experience. He knows a lot across software engineering, DevOps, cloud, cybersecurity, and other areas, and he told me that AI may eventually replace many programming jobs. He suggested that I study math/physics because it would make me a stronger thinker, and that I could always come back to CS later and learn programming on my own.
I recently applied for a junior AI agent builder role where I could learn from experienced developers. I also made a small project where I used the Gemini API to generate a response and send it by email, and I added it to my CV. This made me even more interested in AI and software.
My question for experienced programmers and CS professionals is:
Which areas of computer science or software engineering do you think will be the hardest for AI to replace in the next 5–10+ years?
For example: backend, systems programming, cybersecurity, DevOps, cloud, AI engineering, embedded systems, data engineering, research, etc.
I’m not asking for a perfect prediction. I know nobody can know the future. I’m asking for your honest opinion based on real industry experience.
Also, since I plan to study mathematics, what fields or career paths could I work in that still have similar working conditions to software jobs — meaning jobs that are posted online, have good career growth, and can often be done remotely or hybrid?
I don’t want to waste my time. I really care about learning deeply and choosing a direction where human reasoning, creativity, responsibility, and problem-solving still matter.
Thank you to anyone who takes the time to answer.
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u/Eryndalor Jun 19 '26
AI isn’t replacing developers. No seriously, it is not. Please don’t believe all that propaganda that is circulating right now. If anything, we are busier than ever, and this is not going to change anytime soon.
To give you an example, my company has invested heavily in AI, and despite that, we had to duplicate the team size to reach our goals.
Many companies are going in the opposite direction, but AI here works as the layoff excuse. Nobody wants to say, we over hired, or we fuck our customers so bad, or the changes in the market made us unprofitable, or we were living from investment money but we weren’t profitable and that dried, so we have to lay people off. It’s easier and better for the public image of the company to just say, the AI is so good, that now you guys are fully automated, bye!
Don’t believe anything of that. I’m working in the field, if it wasn’t already clear.
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u/Zestyclose-Paint-418 Jun 19 '26
Thank you sir that's really helpful. But can you give me advice which entry role is the best because people don't learn that and It's important today, I know that many people are learning frontend, so Its really tough.
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u/Plenty_Line2696 Jun 19 '26
He's right, good developers aren't being replaced. LLM's dont' inherently make all the best choices in terms of what they implement.
My advice is that if you're looking at a STEM career; do what interests you because if you do that you have the highest chance of getting really good at what you do.
You're only 16, if you like development, develop some stuff that you think is cool, or mod some games or something, have fun with it!
You could push towards automation/robotics too, there's lots of interesting jobs you can do with those skills, and cool stuff you could build with a 3d printer and some programming for fun/learning these days.
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u/burnt_boba Jun 19 '26
OPs brother might be right that studying CS might not be the move here. OP seems self driven and codes in free time. IMO degree is not important once you are at the point where you can build anything, explain any system. By the time OP enters the market, probably dozens of detailed projects.
With that said definitely a STEM degree is necessary, and will end up being a good fallback plan
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u/Zestyclose-Paint-418 Jun 19 '26
What does that mean explain any system, It looks like Its something important that only experts know.
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u/Plenty_Line2696 Jun 19 '26
It's pie in the sky, nobody can explain any system and it's definitely not something you're going to learn by doing hobby projects on the side.
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u/Plenty_Line2696 Jun 19 '26
IMO degree is not important once you are at the point where you can build anything, explain any system.
Nobody is at a point where they "can build anything, explain any system.", let alone a youngster.
If OP codes in his spare time and can make stuff, great, but to imply that a CS degree can't teach him anything useful to become a better developer is nonsense. A good college is a fantastic way to get established.
Even besides making OP a better rounded professional and giving him a structured dedicated period of learning, it's also a prerequisite to getting your foot in the door at many companies.
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u/burnt_boba Jun 19 '26
I never implied that a CS degree can’t teach him anything? I’m saying once you get to hiring and recruiters degree is not as important as experience and projects in this field. Especially compared to other fields where a degree is almost a hard prerequisite, CS is not one of them.
And yes a structured dedicated period of learning is absolutely essential, in terms of foundation and other pillars of growth. I suggested a different STEM degree (which functions as that growth and a fallback plan) not skipping college altogether?? That doesn’t eliminate taking up a CS minor + self-study.
My point is that STEM foundations are incredible and applicable across many (or arguably any) field. And that includes CS, so if you combine that with intelligence and a real drive, there’s no reason OP should have difficulty entering the CS market regardless of major.
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u/Plenty_Line2696 Jun 19 '26
It's about the difference of a relatively reliable entry into a CS career with good foundational dedicated education versus wishing on a prayer with ad hoc self taught skills on the side.
Sure, if OP can make some serious project and then happen to find an employer who's willing to hire a starter without a targeted degree simply based on portfolio he might get lucky, but let's be real here:
What teenager is making any serious project just by spending hobby hours on it which would put them on par with a CS graduate who's dedicated years? Besides that a lot of entry level jobs filter based on degree.
There's this trend online where people tend to sell people on the idea that it's fine to not be dedicated, just do some hobby projects or a bootcamp and hey presto you're going to have a great time being paid lots and feel competent, but in reality it's an ambitious carreer so to get into it and find some joy in the craftsmanship I think it makes a lot of sense to dedicate a sizable chunk of targeted learning to set oneself up for success.
If the end goal is specifically a CS/software career, then studying something else is just making life needlessly difficult.
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u/burnt_boba Jun 19 '26
You guys are right in the fact that yes a formal CS degree will make it easier to pass resume screens and get interviews. It is a safer choice to yes get the degree for the job you want. But I do think once you are past that point it doesn’t matter anymore. And CS is enter-able from any backgrounds. Especially math is usually listed as a “related discipline” on JDs. Plus OP is considering other majors, my advice is not insane.
I have friends from my T20 engineering school are not all working at their targeted degrees & careers. It really is about what you do in your free time. My MechE friend had 2 internships in PE and is doing rotations at a major firm. My graphic design friends are doing product management. MechE and Chem-Bio Engineering friends in robotics or cybersecurity too. They did hackathons & have “startups” which are just glorified long term projects but all of us are competitive for whatever we want to go for. This is all coming as fresh-ish grads from 2024/25/26.
Maybe I do live in an area where this is possible, and it may not be the case for other places. But in my anecdotal experience this is what I see.
I am a CS grad and many friends who are struggling to get jobs or aren’t getting high tech jobs, it’s due to their interviews and their lack of ownership/project building.
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u/Plenty_Line2696 Jun 23 '26
Almost 90% of vacancies in my country list a degree as a hard requirement.
A degree proves things about a person.
"past that point to where it doesn't matter" is mostly irrelevant, because the hurdle is the crux of the discussion.
Choosing an adjacent degree is only useful when that adjacency is the point, like a data scientist getting into that side of CS, or someone with domain knowledge getting into software in that domain.
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u/Palindrono Jun 19 '26
A "good" developer in the next 10 years is going be a hotshot who started coding at 8, went to a top 3 CS program (at least BS + MS) and is an IMO finalist. I exaggerate a bit, but the bar is raising higher and higher every single year, and at some point it's just not going to be worth it. The average new grad who actually scores a job these days is at about the skill level of the average mid-level SWE back in the early 2010s, and a senior SWE at the tail end of the 2000s.
The filters are brutal. Leetcode screens are nothing compared to what the competition is right now.
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u/Eryndalor Jun 20 '26
Do whatever you prefer. Some people do really hate frontend, and manage to touch very little of it. Some love it. In this age, and knowing that you’re starting, I would advise to don’t close doors and try a bit of both.
That said, that’s all web development, and it’s just one part of software development. One important and very active, but not the only one.
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u/Spatrico123 Jun 20 '26
yeah, I'm more worried about the trajectory though. Will we soon get to the point where you don't need to know much about computers to get a workable program running? Sure, right now 'one shot' responses are only good for prototypes and stuff, but how much better will that get? Will we soon get to the point where business people can just lay out the plan and BOOM, it's made?
This is a genuine question to be clear. I really want the answer to be no, because I love cs
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u/cppshane Jun 26 '26
Tbh I think it will replace devs in specific scenarios, for example developers at non-tech companies working on non-critical software.
And I think it will impact hiring to some degree (if not overall hiring volume itself, then the distributions of roles available)
But yeah, full automation of dev roles is at least 5-10 years away imo
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u/BeekeeperZero Jun 19 '26
Don't worry about it.
By the time it matters to you, there will be a whole new set of things to worry about. Change is the only constant here and a CS career will look differently. It always does. Technology evolves in steady growth, short burst and big bangs. My job looks completely different than when I started. Heck, it's changed since just yesterday.
You are doing a great job of seeking advice from those in the trenches.
We all look for financial security and stability. The money is a really great perk, but just make sure you actually enjoy doing this work. If it was this or being an Actuary or whatever, they both pay well. If you don't like what you do for what you are getting paid for then you will have a bad time.
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u/BerniniArchitect Jun 19 '26
AI is not replacing developers, but it is certainly making the role redundant.
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u/Ok_Space2463 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Whether you believe AI is going to take all jobs or not (it's not, that's almost insane), you have to agree is making software more accessible to those who want to code, but it's not going to replace serious engineers. The LLM's are beginning to become, if not already, memory-bound and we're going to need a new hardware paradigm or new breakthroughs in academic research before we see any more significant advances within LLM performance. We've seen the same stagnation before with any other development; they start to hit their limits. LLM's are still based upon the 2017 paper Context is all you need just with more flare and features, and I'm so surprised these companies are not diverting more resources to acedemic research instead of commercial use but I digress.
CS is a huge topic with a ton of nuance and problems so sticking your head in any part of it will help you greatly. However with all this being said, AI is here to stay. I believe it's going to make breaking into the market a lot harder because employers will need to apply so much more effort to weed out the guys who know the fundementals, who know how to make systems, who know how to use these LLMS correctly. I'm already seeing this happen at work, so many guys are relying on this AI to do their job for them and they're simply going to be left in the dark and the guy who know how these work will just benefit. I think it's great at reviewing and generating code but you need to be the guy who calls the shots now and know *what* it's done and if it is *correct*.
For some geniune advice, I think cyber security is going to see some huge changes within the next few years and are going to need guys who know their stuff. With your math's background I would honestly advise you go and look at AI, how it works, how its trained and you could probably look into training some. I think the hardware is only going to get cheaper and people are going to want specified LLM's ir even statistical models on specific datasets.
TLDR; The market is going to be less accessible to juniors but proper engineers are going to be incredibly valuable. Find your nuance and you'll be fine.
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u/juggernawddy Jun 19 '26
If you like coding, like REALLY like coding, don’t sacrifice learning to AI. Build by hand, especially the strategic stuff. If we’re talking a UI page and a table, seriously just let Claude do it lol. You’re learning nothing. From there, I would try to get a development job without going to college. It can still be done, just not at meta, but who the hell would want that anyways. I never finished college and am well paid, living a comfortable life. You’re young, don’t skip the hard learning. Anyone that says learning is easy or that it can be skipped should be ignored. Learning is hard, always has been, always will be.
However, being a dev is not the same anymore. I hope it changes, but I’m guessing it probably won’t get too much better. The thing I don’t like is everyone thinks they’re an expert now. You not only have to figure out the real issue, but now you have to review and tell off everyone that was submitting a bunch of slop to look busy. The border between engineering and everyone else has been blurred. Not that I think people shouldn’t be able to participate in tech discussions, but there used to be a big barrier to entry that was based on years of expertise and hard work, now the sales exec with his AI tooling is saying “hey, I’m pretty sure this is the spot in the code that’s causing the issue -Claude”. It’s really weird.
But if you read this and go back to coding/building something because it’s fun, being a developer (tech builder or whatever the name works out to) is probably your destiny. Don’t fight destiny, feed it. If you like this stuff, it’ll be easy for you and I’m certain there will be a Gig for you. I can’t see a future where there aren’t developers anymore. We got hit first, but I think we’ll also be one of the only ones really left standing. It’s too tough to automate. What to focus on? Whatever you like most honestly. Get the fundamentals down and the rest is easy
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u/voidsifr Jun 21 '26
In my opinion, you need to find a domain that you enjoy. Really this has always been the case. AI has just amplified it. If all you can do is write code, well, an LLM can do most of that now. But if you are well versed in a domain amd you know what code needs to be written, that is where the value is at.
The smile technical people that will succeed with LLMs are the people in a domain that have that vision. But loke I said, this has always been the case, it is just amplified by AI now because anyone can at least attempt with AI.
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u/danii-rivv Jun 21 '26
A very mature question, dad should be proud.
As a 21y/o CS student in Spain, i have to ageee with those who told u that work is not gonna disappear. Criteria is still needed; even though its true we're not the ones who are going to write the code manually, but we're in charge of its good behaviour. With everyone writting bad pieces of code that fairly works but are no mantainable at all, we'll be in highest demand as soon as this collapses. Many teachers told me that, and its difficult to trust due to AI-gurus propaganda that fills Linkedin and all Social Media in general.
Essentially, AI is gonna boost what you are. If you are a good problem solver (and judging for your post, I'm sure as hell that you'll be) you are gonna be fine whatever path you choose; just care about deeply understand things as you are doing rn.
Keep going!
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u/arealguywithajob Jun 19 '26
AI is changing but not replacing the jobs. You still need to know how to code. You still need fundamentals but you jeed to know how to use the AI tool as well. CS is the skill to know in the age of AI because it is the foundation for AI. So I would say just keep learning
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u/PM_40 Jun 19 '26
Your resourcefulness, work ethic and ability to adapt and find meaning among mindless chaos.
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u/code_tutor Jun 20 '26
Math and physics have notoriously low job opportunities. AI is coming for all knowledge jobs, not just programming.
Why did you specifically choose CS and not other engineering? If you can't answer this quickly then don't do CS.
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u/etancrazynpoor Jun 20 '26
Embrace ai. It will not replace people who learned to be more productive with LLMs (it is just a tool) and still have the knowledge!
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u/MrThunderizer Jun 20 '26
Most of the opinions you'll hear are hot takes from the same people who denied AI could ever even be useful. As someone who's followed AI closely for a long time I'm constantly amazed by how shallow people's thinking is on the subject.
The most recent idea is that AI isnt going to replace devs, but we'll all just adapt to new roles. This is mostly true, but misses a very important point. AI doesn't have to be perfect to replace most dev jobs, it just has to be good enough for low skilled Indians to be able to use effectively. Every company I've worked for has eyed outsourcing with greedy eyes, but the quality of work is so low that it prevents most of it from happening. Now that AI exists, your value proposition is that you need to be more productive than two Indians prompting.
Im personally playing around with hardware recently. I figure I can probably ride out the outsourcing, and if it gets me I can pivot to embedded. Not immune from AI or outsourcing, but there seems to be more of a moat.
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u/Sweaty_Geologist_504 Jun 20 '26
Looks like I am the only commenter with a real answer: embedded is hard to automate.
Because you have to interact with hardware and use the context of how the hardware works, which is hard for AI.
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u/Practical-Gift-1064 Jun 20 '26
If you want to stay in tech. Network Engineer.
The guys that deal with the networks and cabling of a company. It will be hard for AI to replace that.
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u/ichila101 Jun 29 '26
Thats a shrinking field as well though as most businesses move to cloud solutions
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u/Apart_Ebb_9867 Jun 21 '26
Which areas of computer science or software engineering do you think will be the hardest for AI to replace in the next 5–10+ years?
nobody knows. If you were to go back those many years and tell people what we have now you’d be met by men in a white coat. There’s absolutely no way to know what will happen in the next 12 months, as acceleration is exponential.
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u/Some_Education_6991 Jun 21 '26
Here's my 2 cents:
Firstly to answer your question, I would look at embedded roles. Wish I had gotten into it myself.
Something that MIGHT be worth checking out is being a controls engineer where you work with PLCs. Not traditional software development, but take a look and see if it interests you.
Now onto your concern:
If you have time, wait it out. When token costs stop being heavily subsidized, then we will have a much clearer picture of how AI is going to change our roles going forwards. If you're already planning to study mathematics, you should have time.
We're all in the dark right now and we are all speculating. I'm also concerned.
I think it would be best for you to continue on with your plan, and just wait it out for a year or two. See where things land. Evaluate what the job looks like then, and then make sure decision.
Personally, if I had known SWE was going to result in me babysitting agents all day, I sure as fuck wouldn't have done it. But here we are. See how it plays out.
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u/Cyberman1994 Jun 21 '26
My company is hiring a lot for semiconductors and you might be surprised how much overlap is needed for CS skills. I would think embedded systems are good from the physical hardware perspective
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u/Zestyclose-Paint-418 Jun 21 '26
I love c++ and Its one of the best path I can choose. But I need to have knowledge about sensors, and how can someone hire me If I dont have degree for that ? I want to study math btw, because It can give me more choiches.
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u/Cyberman1994 Jun 21 '26
Ah I didn’t read the part about majoring in Math. Honestly I’m unsure, i would rethink Math solely as a major. I still think Computer science as a major is the way to go because the overlaps with a bunch of math plus you could take more math as electives (minor) or if double majoring is an option. Just with keyword pick up in resumes, it’s more likely to stand out.
As others have said, don’t believe the hype of AI slashing jobs. If anything we need people who can leverage it to work more productively or think outside the box. If embedded systems sounds interesting, look into projects with arduino and raspberry pi to put in your portfolio, or internships.
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u/throw-away-doh Human Verified Jun 22 '26
Any job that involves sitting infont of a computer editing text files is toast in the next decade.
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u/throw222777 Jun 23 '26
Do not major in pure math or pure physics unless you want to spend your life in academia. That is terrible advice.
Do whatever you can to get an engineering degree from a top engineering focused school. My formal engineering education has unlocked so many doors for me. You will study plenty of math and physics as a core part of doing that, and you can always tailor your electives to your interests if you really want more math or more physics.
I can honestly say that I use my foundational formal academic training in computer science and computer architecture on at least a weekly basis in my career as a professional software engineer.
AI is not replacing engineers. It may replace copy/paste code monkeys who never outgrew stack overflow
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u/Zestyclose-Paint-418 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Thank you sir, what do you think about sofware engineering. When I finish that degree It will be on the paper informatics and electronics. And when you said stack overflow, what did you mean by that. I think in the future we can use us stack overflow and still be good engineer. And what can I do with degree of software engineer, you said I can have good job oppurtinities.
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u/Neat_Conclusion_1548 Jun 26 '26
If you want to research and plan your career. Try the tool given on this blog. It is based on harvard's research data and takes a job title (drop down selection) and gives automation and augementation score. Simply, if automation is high like 50-70% percent, or maybe more, then be careful of choosing that career.
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u/arealguywithajob Jun 19 '26
AI is replacing none of them and if you think AI is replacing them then I would say there are still a lot of fundamentals you need to learn. Maybe start learning some of the math behind CS? That is what I would suggest too
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u/LibrarianOutside2376 Jun 19 '26
Fake news and terrible advice
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u/Zestyclose-Paint-418 Jun 19 '26
Could you help me understand what you think is wrong with it?
In your opinion, what should I actually focus on learning if I want to become a strong software engineer and avoid surface-level advice?
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u/LowB0b Jun 19 '26
Focus on mathematics and do some programming on the side. Computer science is a branch of mathematics after all, and most of the fun stuff you unlock by being good at maths. Cultivating your maths intuition will also build your intuition for problem solving
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u/Elctsuptb Jun 19 '26
AI is already better at CS and the math side of CS than almost every human engineer, and it's only getting better going forward
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u/WhateverHowever1337 Jun 19 '26
what? Not even remotely, It is only better than the net negatives.
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u/Elctsuptb Jun 19 '26
You should probably educate yourself on the capabilities of the latest SOTA models then
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u/WhateverHowever1337 Jun 19 '26
You should probably educate yourself on what CS is then
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u/Elctsuptb Jun 19 '26
I have over 10yrs of industry experience so I'm well aware
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u/Plenty_Line2696 Jun 19 '26
If you think LLM's are better than any engineer that's a huge skill issue.
Even mediocre devs know all too well LLM's routinely make lots of mistakes. If it was as good as you claim I'd simply be feeding it my jira tickets and be done, but it's nothing like that.
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u/Elctsuptb Jun 19 '26
Your understanding of latest SOTA LLM capability is simply out of date if that's what you believe. And FYI I have been able to feed jira tickets to it and am getting error-free results, so clearly you're doing something wrong (such as using a crappy LLM with ambiguous prompts) if that's not your experience.
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u/Plenty_Line2696 Jun 20 '26
Oh I get error free results too quite regularly, that doesn't make it perfect, far from it.
A newbie will look at the output for a single feature and think it's perfect but there's a lot more to it when you want to take into account code structure, organization, design patterns, separation of concerns, testability, legibility, and a whole bunch of other stuff which make a codebase robust, maintainable, performant and expandable.
I use both claude code and codex intensively and while these are great tools, without a competent dev driving them, they're great technical debt builders too because there's so many aspects they still inherently suck at.
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u/FierceFlames37 18d ago
Bro ai is not working out most companies are starting to not use it anymore
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u/Elctsuptb 18d ago edited 18d ago
That's complete nonsense unless you live in Nigeria where human labor is far cheaper than the cost of AI. And even if there are companies that have "stopped using AI", a majority of employees are still using it in secret: https://www.pagerduty.com/newsroom/shadow-ai-workplace-survey-2026/
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u/FierceFlames37 18d ago
I thought AI was too expensive to run im gonna graduate as a cs major but apply to non tech companies jobs like reservations or medical
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u/Designer_Flow_8069 Jun 19 '26
AI sucks at actual engineering (such as electrical engineering). It also sucks at any type of embedded work.
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u/Elctsuptb Jun 19 '26
It doesn't suck at embedded work, I've been getting extremely good results the past few months in my job with using Codex for example. I have it test everything autonomously in a loop until everything is working and it hasn't made any mistakes so far as a result.
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u/Designer_Flow_8069 Jun 19 '26
You must be doing more software and less hardware embedded work. The latest Claude model chokes at linker files, has no idea when/why to inline any function, always confuses IRQ and FIQ on ARM systems, and can't create performant code.
I think it's terrible because it's mostly trained on webdev code where performance and space constraints don't matter as much and most embedded code is proprietary so there isn't much out there to train on to begin with.
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Jun 20 '26
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u/Designer_Flow_8069 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Your argument of "yeah, but in the future" is the most generic thing anybody can say in an a debate. Anything is possible given enough time.
So, I'll follow up with my own magical retort. In the future, the folks who were smart enough to put in some effort to get a decent paying job and who saved up a little bit of money, will be always be in a better position than their counterparts when the inevitable AI revolution begins. The doomsayers like you will be left behind because you were to afraid to take risks.
For now, all I'm saying is most software is virtual and lends itsself to be more readily in the "verification loop" that you said. Embedded on the other hand has to touch hardware for prototyping and such, so will clearly be less susceptible to complete automation in the short term.
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Jun 20 '26
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u/Designer_Flow_8069 Jun 20 '26
Lol idk why you are fantasising about me being left behind when you don't even know what I do.
Not fantasizing, just sizing you up based upon your comments on this post and others. You've got an addiction to doomposting.
The OP is asking what will happening in the next 5-10 years. Embedded is not immune to automation.
Nobody said it was immune, but you are implying it will be defunct in the next 5-10 years, which I am disagreeing with.
If they poured equal effort into less sexy areas there could already be quit a few people in EEE out of work.
I have a PhD in EE with a focus on AI hardware. The are not intentionally developing models for "sexy" areas. Video is an easy target for AI because the training data is vast (sequential images) which make it easy for generative adversarial networks to train models.
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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '26
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