Is a Web Developer Safe From AI?
The production half of the job — writing code from a clear spec — is now genuinely fast and cheap with AI coding assistants. The systems half — architecture decisions, debugging novel failures, and translating a vague business need into a working product — is not, and that's the half clients and employers still pay for.
At Risk · Verdict: 12-18 months runway
AI Exposure Score
Web development is splitting the way graphic design and paralegal work already have: the templated production side — basic CRUD apps, simple marketing sites, boilerplate from a clear spec — is exactly what AI coding tools now do fast and cheaply, which hits junior and freelance devs doing that kind of build hardest. What hasn't moved is the systems half: owning architecture tradeoffs, debugging a production incident under pressure, and being the accountable human when a vulnerability ships. This isn't a 'coding is dead' story — it's a story about typing speed no longer being the bottleneck, which pushes value toward judgment, infrastructure, and client relationships.
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