Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected from 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet
Preston Fore
Wed, May 14, 2025 at 4:00 PM GMT+7
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Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected from 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet
Preston Fore
Wed, May 14, 2025 at 4:00 PM GMT+7
4 min read
2.8k
AI obsolescence is “coming for basically everyone in due time,” says Shawn K, an engineer who went from earning $150k to being locked out of the workforce for over a year.
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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has predicted that AI will be doing all coding tasks by next year—but an existential crisis is already hitting some software engineers. One man who lost his job last year has had to turn to living in an RV trailer, DoorDashing and selling his household items on eBay to make ends meet, as his once $150k salary has turned to dust.
Tech layoffs are nothing new for Shawn K (his full legal last name is one letter).
The software engineer first lost his job after the 2008 financial crisis and then again during the pandemic, but on both occasions, he was back on his feet just a
few months later.
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