If my boss came to me and said "hey we're going to start vibe coding everything st work from now on. You can manually edit code but claude code needs to be your primary driver from now on" I would quit and find a new career. I enjoy coding. I like solving puzzles using the specifics of a language syntax. I write libraries and APIs and I put a great deal of effort into making sure the interface is usable by a human being.
If we get to the point where we are no longer coding, we are just describing things in product language to a computer and letting it do all the real work, then I will find a more fulfilling career because this ain't it
By the time it works flawlessly, it won't be your career anymore, it'll be the product manager's. They will describe what they want and the AI will produce it. You won't be told to "use Claude all the time".
I personally hate coding, but it's a means to an end, and I care about the end. I'm also paranoid about code I don't understand, so I only rarely use AI and even then it's either for things I understand 100% or things that don't matter. But it would be silly to claim they don't produce working code, no matter what we want to call it.
This is the core of the issue. You hate coding, and I love it. I chose to be a software engineer not because I like using software, but because I like writing software.
If we get to a point where the engineers are replaced by machines, I would hope that the project managers were replaced years before that, as a final act of revenge
I enjoy a lot of things (Software Engineering is one of them) that in NO way determines whether or not AI is coding, nor does it guarantee me a career (just ask all the blacksmiths that disappeared once cars became the mass transport vehicle).
The fact that people are going to (possibly) be able to instruct a computer to do whatever they wish without the need of a four year degree and several years of experience scares you, I get that, but that's not going to have any effect on reality.
Edit: Have a look at all the peoples careers that have ended because software took over.
And more importantly perhaps to u/shortrounddev2, if they enjoy coding so much, they'll still be able to do it as a hobby! It's just that there may not be anybody willing to pay for a slow lumbering human to work their way through the problem.
If we get to the point where we are no longer coding, we are just describing things in product language to a computer and letting it do all the real work, then I will find a more fulfilling career because this ain't it