u/HHalo6

Hey so I work as a lead developer (of a team of 5) for a product-based (so non-software) company of around 500 employees, where I've been for 8 years. I've been leading this team for about 4 years, and I like what I do a lot. My boss told me today I've been given the opportunity to build a new team because they are going to push AI to "automate manual labor" and basically no other company in this industry does it, so they see a very big competitive advantage here.

The problem is that they don't know what are they going to do exactly, nor who is going to be on the team, anything. I'd have a voice on which people we would bring, but I don't know to what extent. I'm not really an AI expert or anything, but I'm a very good dev compared to the others (this is not FAANG or anything), and my boss and colleagues think I'm a great leader and trust me.

Of course, I'm afraid of all the news and, using LLMs myself I can see dev jobs getting cut by 50% in a few years, since these things are really good if well managed. Yeah I know Jevon's paradox and everything but it's just how I see it, and it's how automation has gone in other industries before. But I don't want to pick an option out of fear, and if generating code gets trivial I'm quite confident I would be in that 50% that remains.

Last but not least, I'm not anti-AI, but I don't feel well with the idea of being in a team whose whole concept is replacing workers. I just don't agree with it at the bottom of my heart, maybe I'm an hypocrite for using LLMs and "hating" them, but I see them as great tools, I just can't see a clear path out of job displacements.

So I have two options basically (same comp, same job description just different teams):

a) Remain with my current team, where I finally got pretty much everything under control after these years (I came to lead them from other team, but the team existed already, so there was a learning period at the beginning). I like the team, I like the people and I like the project. I'm happy and it seems that we can grow this project a lot, so I shouldn't have any fears for the future.

b) Switch to this new AI team and pick a new lead for the old team. I'm not so sure I will like the project, and I don't really know if I'm just tempted because it says "AI" in the description and I see it as having more future than making software.

Boss told me I could always go back to my old job, but I don't see that happening if I pick a succesor. It wouldn't be fair to them, and I know I would feel very bad in doing so.

If it helps, I'm 29M and I have a mortgage. My TC is above average for my country and age, and I can save plenty each month, even living alone. I'm open to answering more questions if it helps.

Thank you so much guys.