$150K Software Engineer Replaced by AI, Now He Lives in a Trailer and Delivers Food

Shawn K was a successful software engineer, making $150,000 a year. He worked with Angular and built apps for a metaverse startup. But last year, he lost his job and he hasn’t been able to find another since.

Shawn now resides in a small RV trailer in upstate New York and survives on food delivery for DoorDash and selling old electronics online. He says he has applied to over 800 jobs and only got 10 interviews, some with AI bots instead of real people.

“I feel super invisible,” K told Fortune. “I feel unseen. I feel like I’m filtered out before a human is even in the chain.”

AI Is Already Replacing Coders

Big tech companies have started using AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to write code. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently said AI will be doing 90% of all coding by late 2025. He also said we might soon live in a world where AI writes “almost all” software code. Other tech leaders are warning the same thing. Elon Musk calls AI his “biggest fear” and warns that AI could take over many jobs. Goldman Sachs estimates AI could take away 300 million jobs globally through automation. And it’s already happening. According to Layoffs.fyi, a more recent estimate indicates that there will be 130,482 tech employees affected by layoffs in 2024, spread across 397 companies.

From Angular Developer to Gig Worker

Shawn used to build Angular apps and complex backend systems. But now, with AI tools doing the same work faster and cheaper, companies are letting go of full teams. Shawn believes businesses are using AI to cut jobs instead of boosting their teams’ power.

“It’s coming for basically everyone in due time, and we are already overdue for proposing any real solution in society to heading off the worst of these effects,” K expressed his concern in words on Substack.

He’s tried to go back to school or become a truck driver, but it’s too expensive. For now, he keeps checking job boards, delivering food, and hoping for change.

More Job Losses Could Be Coming

Experts say this may just be the beginning. Many software developers, especially those using frameworks like Angular, React, or Python, could find themselves pushed out of work.

Shawn calls it “The Great Displacement”- a future where AI doesn’t just help people work but takes their jobs entirely.

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