New Moms Are Returning to Coding Jobs Radically Reshaped by AI

Danielle worked as a software developer in Portland, Oregon, and left the workforce in mid-2024. When she planned to return a year later, AI coding had shifted from rare to expected. She said skills learned for rote development are now expected to be outsourced to AI. Large AI companies forecast that most code will be “vibe-coded,” including predictions that AI will write most Meta code within 18 months. Executives at major AI labs have warned that white-collar jobs could be wiped out, and software development is experiencing especially sharp disruption. With new coding automation tools released in May 2025, the work has become more about supervising AI outputs than writing code, and new mothers may fall behind colleagues who started earlier.

"Before she left the workforce in mid-2024, barely anybody used AI to write code; by the time she was ready to return, a year later, it had become the expectation. Once upon a time, she had been drawn to coding for the job security it offered, but AI was threatening to upend that. "The skills that I had learned-rote development skills-we are now expected to outsource to AI," Danielle says."

"The world's largest AI companies anticipate a future where pretty much everything is "vibe-coded." In April, Mark Zuckerberg predicted that AI will write most of Meta's code within the next 18 months. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently told WIRED he expects AI coding to become "one of these rare multitrillion-dollar markets.""

"The kind of work I was doing before, I would like to do again. I think I was good at it," says Danielle. "But I recognize that job will never exist again." The executives in charge of the largest AI labs have warned that the technology could wipe out white-collar jobs, from law to finance to consulting to sales. But few industries have been carved up in the same way as software development."

"With the release of coding automation tools by Anthropic and OpenAI in May 2025, the field became less about composition and more about babysitting. Learning this new way of working isn't overly complicated, but new mothers face falling behind colleagues who have benefited from a headstart."

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