A 28-year-old software engineer in the city’s epicenter, the “Silicon Valley of India,” has sparked a social media firestorm after quitting his well-paid ₹19 LPA (Lakhs Per Annum) role. His reason? Deep conviction in the idea that a tipping point has been reached and that human coders will soon be replaced by machine intelligence.
The techie, who told his resignation story on a well-known social networking site, had worked for a top mid-size software company located in Bengaluru’s Whitefield area. His post that went viral this week points to the mounting fear across the global tech workforce with Large Language Models (LLMs) and autonomous coding agents reaching new levels of expertise.
The argument of artificial intelligence inevitability. Named Anirudh only, the engineer explained that he spent the last half year watching AI tools complete his daily coding tasks in seconds, tasks that used to take him and his team an entire week. “After taxes, I was making ₹1.5 lakh a month, but I felt like a fraud,” Anirudh wrote. “I’d seen what a 99 percent accuracy AI agent is doing on 90% of what I do in the job: debugging and writing boilerplate code & even the systems architecture. Two years from now, companies won’t require a team of ten developers, they will need one prompt engineer and a subscription service for artificial intelligence.”
A Viral Debate: Reality or Overreaction?
The resignation has split the technology industry into two outspoken factions:
The Alarmists: Some junior to mid-level developers backed Anirudh, suggesting “It’s a case of rapid industrialisation,” explaining that the latest data from 2025-2026 layoffs of tech employees in the early job market illustrate a “new-age buzzword algorithm efficiency” is a euphemism for “AI replacement.”
The Optimists
Senior architects and industry veterans say AI is just a tool. “AI doesn’t build products; people build products,” tweeted one tech leader. “Writing code, yes it does, but it gets nothing of business logic, empathy, nor to what creative ‘why’ to do the feature.”
Industry context the turn comes in 2026
This resignation is also happening on the heels of the early 2026 release of some "Agentic AI" platforms to automatically update and manage software repositories, address security vulnerabilities, and push updates on their own. Even though NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) has declared recently that AI will enable the creation of new roles in data curation and AI ethics, the here-and-now for many entry-level "commodity coders" in India is beginning to look like a shadow.
What’s Up Next for the “Ex-Techie”?
Instead of searching for another coding position, Anirudh announced that he is returning to his hometown of Karnataka to work in organic agriculture and producing high-end artisanal furniture. “I want to do something that requires a human soul and physical presence, that an algorithm can’t replicate,” he said. His story is an eerie reminder of the changing sands of the job market today, in which “safe” software engineering is no longer assured.
