tl;dr it argues when there's a dramatic improvement in the efficiency of production of a good or service, its per-unit cost goes down so much that demand skyrockets, leading to greater demand for employees in that sector. The examples it gives are radiologists (after neural nets were predicted to be able to perform their jobs essentially for free), and dock workers
If this happens in the case of SWEs, it would mean a 'unit' of software will be able to be produced much more cheaply, but the demand for and price (i.e. salaries) of SWEs might stay the same or increase.
Easy to cherry pick examples and counter-examples. See the luddites for counter-example. Artisans making high-quality textiles are no longer broadly in demand. Lots of pro examples too, I just don't find analogies helpful. It may be that like clothes, there's only so much need for software. We don't really need 1000 browsers or operating systems after all, 3 or 4 good ones is enough (and 90% of people use 1 or 2), despite there being free very good alternatives (unit costs 0, demand still low).
It reduces the amount of engineers needed. I'd say by half and web, graphic designers and front end developers coding the designs are really no longer needed.
I was just laid off from my job of 8 years in which I was the UX Researcher, Designer, Front-End Dev and Customer UX Support. In a week I have sold my house and am downsizing significantly and in two years or less will be working as an RN(nurse). I will try to get back into my field but the current administration and the many tech layoffs has flooded the market with people like me looking for job. All the while AI is eating my career & field. It just doesnt seem wise that my career of 20 years is going to be around in the next ten years.
Also, will there be interfaces we have today in five to ten years or so? My guess is AI is the interface that does everything for us through voice (Open AI's upcoming device) or text .. now we still could have handheld AI phones or devices but where AI does everything including presents articles, games we play, etc and all from these AI devices' lock screen (websites are not visited much)
"Will AI replace software engineers?" is not the right question and stems from a misunderstanding of how tech affects humans and how they work.
Tech is a tool. It will take away some jobs, and then create new ones. Think of a combine tractor -- it took away crop picking jobs, but created a new job of combine tractor driver. It bumps productivity.
The correct frame is "how can software engineers (or anyone, for that matter) use AI to increase my productivity?" With that frame, AI does not replace engineers; rather, engineers are in the best position to understand how it deliver products faster and implement that understanding.
AI will replace humans in performing every cognitive task, unless you believe that there is something about biology that makes it categorically better for certain kinds of computation.
There's no reason to believe that's the case.
LLMs and specifically auto-regressive chat bots with transformers for prediction will probably not replace engineers any time soon.
They probably won't ever replace humans for the most cognitively demanding engineering tasks like design, planning, or creative problem solving.
We will need a different architecture for that, transformers don't look like they get smarter in that way even with scale.
The tractor analogy keeps coming up in these threads, and I think it's actually more pessimistic than people realize.
Tractors didn't just change farming. They emptied entire regions.
What saved the people (not the communities) was that other industries absorbed them. Factory work, services, construction. The question for software isn't whether AI creates efficiency. It's whether there's somewhere else for displaced engineers to go.
I've been writing code professionally for 16 years. The honest answer is I don't know. The optimistic scenario is that AI makes software so cheap that we build things we never would have attempted. The pessimistic one is that most of what needed building gets built, and the remaining work fits in fewer hands.
Both seem plausible. I'd bet on somewhere in between, but I'm not confident enough to tell anyone starting out that they should ignore the risk entirely.
The tractor analogy continues to work. Take a look at right to repair.
I think the main "concern" is that Senior devs, code, essentially the entire current working body of programmers is going to bootstrap AI, and once they're gone, they'll be no one to replace them. And at that point, there's no fall back system.
IMO: Its going to. But, organizations which frame this replacement as "we're going to fire you and replace you with AI" are going to crash and burn. Instead, we're just seeing per-engineer and per-team productivity increase, and that productivity begins to outpace other bottlenecks in your company process, and you hit another wall. When faced with that second wall, some companies will naturally interpret this as "ok we don't need to hire more engineers". Other companies will try to apply AI (or hire humans) to fix that bottleneck, then go back to hiring engineers.
The dream of a Jira integration directly wired to an autonomous system to quickly close stories with no human intervention will remain a dream for a long time for anything except the lowest-level 10% of stories. Its not interactive enough; the feedback loop needs to be tighter, the vibes need to be conversational, and businesses will get the most value out of the pilot in the chair being someone who in years past called themselves a software engineer. I think we still will; the tools just change.
1. The common (and correct) claim that software engineering is not just about writing code (counter argument, with time, AI will be able to take on planning, debugging. Counter counter argument: if you ever tried just do what customers ask, you will get conflicting requirements, humans will need to help AI make decisions, not implement them)
2. Related to the above, as long as a good software engineer + AI brings more ROI than a mediocre engineer + AI that brings more ROI than a random person + AI that brings more ROI than just AI, it will be economically wise to hire more good engineers to beat your competitors who just opted to save money and fired their engineering team. Salaries might go down but for top talent, eg imagine an “AI whisperer” that can not be a 10x engineer but a 1000x because they know how to get the most out of Claud code / cursor. They will be paid accordingly.
3. Jevons paradox - perhaps making software ubiquitous, cheaper to make, will actually make software engineers in larger demand
It won't replace all engineers, but it will replace many. Code is no longer some precious resource. You now turn on the tap and code flows out, and it requires only so many people to turn on a tap.
Typing code will be replaced, but that’s okay. Because for me, typing and not making typos while keeping a high level plan in your head - is bloody awful.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 41.7 ms ] threadtl;dr it argues when there's a dramatic improvement in the efficiency of production of a good or service, its per-unit cost goes down so much that demand skyrockets, leading to greater demand for employees in that sector. The examples it gives are radiologists (after neural nets were predicted to be able to perform their jobs essentially for free), and dock workers
If this happens in the case of SWEs, it would mean a 'unit' of software will be able to be produced much more cheaply, but the demand for and price (i.e. salaries) of SWEs might stay the same or increase.
I was just laid off from my job of 8 years in which I was the UX Researcher, Designer, Front-End Dev and Customer UX Support. In a week I have sold my house and am downsizing significantly and in two years or less will be working as an RN(nurse). I will try to get back into my field but the current administration and the many tech layoffs has flooded the market with people like me looking for job. All the while AI is eating my career & field. It just doesnt seem wise that my career of 20 years is going to be around in the next ten years.
Also, will there be interfaces we have today in five to ten years or so? My guess is AI is the interface that does everything for us through voice (Open AI's upcoming device) or text .. now we still could have handheld AI phones or devices but where AI does everything including presents articles, games we play, etc and all from these AI devices' lock screen (websites are not visited much)
Tech is a tool. It will take away some jobs, and then create new ones. Think of a combine tractor -- it took away crop picking jobs, but created a new job of combine tractor driver. It bumps productivity.
The correct frame is "how can software engineers (or anyone, for that matter) use AI to increase my productivity?" With that frame, AI does not replace engineers; rather, engineers are in the best position to understand how it deliver products faster and implement that understanding.
LLMs and specifically auto-regressive chat bots with transformers for prediction will probably not replace engineers any time soon. They probably won't ever replace humans for the most cognitively demanding engineering tasks like design, planning, or creative problem solving. We will need a different architecture for that, transformers don't look like they get smarter in that way even with scale.
Tractors didn't just change farming. They emptied entire regions.
What saved the people (not the communities) was that other industries absorbed them. Factory work, services, construction. The question for software isn't whether AI creates efficiency. It's whether there's somewhere else for displaced engineers to go.
I've been writing code professionally for 16 years. The honest answer is I don't know. The optimistic scenario is that AI makes software so cheap that we build things we never would have attempted. The pessimistic one is that most of what needed building gets built, and the remaining work fits in fewer hands.
Both seem plausible. I'd bet on somewhere in between, but I'm not confident enough to tell anyone starting out that they should ignore the risk entirely.
I think the main "concern" is that Senior devs, code, essentially the entire current working body of programmers is going to bootstrap AI, and once they're gone, they'll be no one to replace them. And at that point, there's no fall back system.
The dream of a Jira integration directly wired to an autonomous system to quickly close stories with no human intervention will remain a dream for a long time for anything except the lowest-level 10% of stories. Its not interactive enough; the feedback loop needs to be tighter, the vibes need to be conversational, and businesses will get the most value out of the pilot in the chair being someone who in years past called themselves a software engineer. I think we still will; the tools just change.
1. The common (and correct) claim that software engineering is not just about writing code (counter argument, with time, AI will be able to take on planning, debugging. Counter counter argument: if you ever tried just do what customers ask, you will get conflicting requirements, humans will need to help AI make decisions, not implement them)
2. Related to the above, as long as a good software engineer + AI brings more ROI than a mediocre engineer + AI that brings more ROI than a random person + AI that brings more ROI than just AI, it will be economically wise to hire more good engineers to beat your competitors who just opted to save money and fired their engineering team. Salaries might go down but for top talent, eg imagine an “AI whisperer” that can not be a 10x engineer but a 1000x because they know how to get the most out of Claud code / cursor. They will be paid accordingly.
3. Jevons paradox - perhaps making software ubiquitous, cheaper to make, will actually make software engineers in larger demand
We still need / want to study physics to understand the universe despite the fact that it is a process that we have no control over.
AI is the same. Even when code is written by AGI you still need to be able to understand what it is and how it works.
The alternative is complete abdication and resembles a lot more like religion or even a cult.
Trust but verify.
Typing code will be replaced, but that’s okay. Because for me, typing and not making typos while keeping a high level plan in your head - is bloody awful.