Will AI Take Your Dev Job? The Real Answer | Matt Wicks

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At NDC Sydney, Matt Wicks sits down with Michel Sanford to tackle a question a lot of developers are quietly asking: are we cooked thanks to AI? Michelle argues that while people love to anthropomorphize AI, the bigger story is how these tools are changing the way developers learn, build, and innovate. Rather than replacing engineers outright, AI is removing toil, speeding up coding, and opening the door to building things that previously would have taken weeks or months. The catch? It also raises the bar. They explore why companies using AI just to cut costs are missing the point, how junior developers can use tools like GitHub Copilot to learn faster, and why senior engineers still bring critical judgment, architecture experience, and battle scars that AI cannot replace. The future, they argue, belongs to developers who stay adaptable, keep learning, and use AI to amplify their impact.

00:00 | Introduction
01:00 | Why people anthropomorphize AI
02:12 | Hallucinations, reasoning, and “developer-like” behaviour
04:35 | Are AI models changing how we work with them?
05:43 | Will AI take developers’ jobs?
07:21 | AI removes toil but also creates more opportunity
10:49 | Why companies must innovate instead of just cutting headcount
12:11 | How junior developers can use AI to learn faster
16:06 | How AI helps senior developers write safer, better code
20:18 | Why adaptability is the key to staying employable

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Get in touch:
Matt Wicks – SSW Solution Architect
About: https://www.ssw.com.au/people/matt-wi…

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #DeveloperProductivity #GitHubCopilot #SoftwareDevelopment #NDCSydney #TechCareers #Coding #Developers #SSWTV

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About the speakers

Matt is an elite SSW Solution Architect who runs the Newcastle office. Matt stands out in the tech landscape as a certified Scrum Master, an Octopus Insider, and is GitHub accredited. From the early days when .NET 2 was still in beta, Matt has been capitalizing on the full potential of the Microsoft stack, coding his way to ingenious solutions that deliver significant business value.

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