I was scrolling through my feed a few weeks ago and came across a headline that stopped me. Something along the lines of "AI is replacing software engineers" with a graph showing a drop in entry-level job postings. I read it, closed the tab, and then opened it again.
I am an IT student specializing in web and mobile application development. I am still learning. And I am trying to figure out if the thing I am working toward is still going to be there when I graduate.
I want to write about that honestly, because I think a lot of students are feeling the same thing and nobody is really talking about it from this side.
What I Keep Hearing
The news cycle around AI and software engineering has been loud lately. GitHub Copilot can write functions. ChatGPT can debug code. There are demos of AI agents building entire features from a single prompt. Tech companies are doing layoffs and citing AI as part of the reason.
From the outside, it sounds like the profession is collapsing before I even get a chance to enter it.
But when I actually talk to developers, or read more carefully past the headline, the picture is more complicated. The tools are changing how the work gets done. That is real. But the work itself is not disappearing. It is shifting.
The problem is that "it is shifting" is not a very comforting thing to hear when you are still in the middle of learning the basics.
How It Affects Me as an IT Student
The honest answer is that it makes everything feel more urgent and more uncertain at the same time.
There is this pressure now to not just learn programming, but to also learn how to use AI tools, understand how models work, keep up with what is new, and somehow still finish your coursework and build projects and maintain a portfolio. It is a lot.
I also notice that some of the things I am studying feel like they are being automated away before I even get to use them professionally. Writing boilerplate, generating starter components, scaffolding a mobile screen layout. These used to be things junior developers did. Now AI does them in seconds.
That raises a real question: if the entry-level tasks are being automated, where does a new IT graduate fit in, especially one focused on web and mobile?
I do not have a clean answer to that. But I think the question itself is worth sitting with rather than dismissing.
What I Am Trying to Do About It
I decided to stop treating AI tools as something to be anxious about and start treating them as something to actually learn.
I use Cursor, Claude Code, Antigravity, and Codex when I code now. Not to skip the learning, but to understand what they produce. When the tool generates something I do not fully understand, I make myself figure out why it works before moving on. That has actually made me learn faster in some areas, because I am seeing patterns I would not have written myself yet.
I am also trying to focus on the things that AI is not good at replacing. Understanding the problem before writing any code. Thinking about why a UI is designed a certain way, not just how to build it. Knowing when a mobile experience feels right versus when it just technically works. Communicating clearly about decisions. These feel like the skills that will matter more, not less, as the tools get better.
And I am building things. Small things, but real things. Projects I can point to and say: I understood the problem, I made decisions, I shipped it. That feels more valuable than any certification right now.
Is There Still a Job for Me?
I think so. But I think the job looks different from what I imagined when I started this degree, or during my senior high school as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) student.
It is less about being the person who writes every line of code and more about being the person who understands what the app should do and why. It is less about memorizing syntax and more about knowing how to evaluate whether a solution actually solves the user's problem. It is less about doing the work alone and more about directing tools and collaborating with people.
That is actually a more interesting version of the job, if I am being honest. I just have to be willing to adapt to it rather than hold on to the version I expected.
The field is not dying. It is changing faster than it ever has. And being an IT student right now, right in the middle of that change, is uncomfortable but also kind of a strange advantage. I am learning in the environment I will actually be working in, not the one from five years ago.
That is what I keep reminding myself, anyway.