For the past few years I have been working as a freelance software developer, and I have seen first-hand how AI has shaped and changed our industry.
A lot of friends have moved from primarily writing code to being code reviewers, and that is something I am trying very hard to fight against. I love writing code. It is fun to understand how a codebase works, to pull it apart and reason through it, rather than hand a prompt to an LLM and let it hammer away at things. AI is faster, sure, but AI is not more fun. Software development should be fun.
Reconsidering the Path
For a little while now I have been thinking about changing careers. Software development was always meant to be a stopgap after I dropped out of university. I wanted something to do with my time, and freelancing turned out to be genuinely rewarding. I have met so many wonderful clients over the five or so years I have been doing this. But the competition is fierce, and in a world where an LLM can automate a great many people out of a job, it feels increasingly unsustainable.
I still love software. I still have personal projects that I work on. But I do not think freelancing is something I will carry seriously into the rest of 2026. I will finish off my current clients’ projects, and then I am planning to move into a more traditional IT role, which is something I have always wanted since I was a kid.
Where My Heart Takes Me
I love getting hands-on: installing servers, playing with switches, setting up machines. I had some volunteer experience along those lines when I was at college and it was brilliant. There is something deeply satisfying about it that is hard to put into words.
So, goodbye to freelancing for now. It is not forever, and I do not think I will ever leave software development entirely. It is too enjoyable to think of a project and then make it real. You can see the various projects I have put out for the public at larsens.dev/projects.
A Wider Trend
I do not think I am alone in this, either. Software developers have always joked about packing it all in and becoming farmers instead, but I genuinely think we will start to see more capable, confident developers leave the industry to follow wherever their heart takes them.