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Ask HN: Many SWEngs out there are considering re-training

3 points by jrowilliams ↗ HN
Question is what it says on the tin. I've been mulling over the state of the industry and where I believe it to be going, and while I believe there will still be a role for us SWEng's in the future, I believe there will be a need for far fewer of us.

So much so that, a la industrial revolution, there will be lots of layoffs and SWEngs without a cause. This is obviously quite a pessimistic view of where the industry is going, and maybe I'm just looking for some reassurance or discussion - my question is at what point do a large amount of SWEngs have to find something else to do and re-train?

23 comments

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guitarlimeo
Definitely. Been thinking of police school (not in USA lol) or some other public service that is actually needed in the society.
markus_zhang
I think the process is already ongoing for the juniors and new graduates? Now, speaking as a senior, a quite mediocre one, I wouldn’t be surprised if I can never find a similar job if I’m laid off.
yevhen_builds
With AI taking over coding, you can become more manager role instead of SWE itself.

You can run agents by yourself on your 9-5 and still make crucial decisions in software industry.

jrowilliams
I get the feeling the vast number of people already in a manager role (who are not techincally grounded) will not be able to understand the benefit of allowing SWEs to step into that role, as opposed to taking on that role themselves.
dapperdrake
The companies that end up doing this will be more like Google with technical managers.

The other companies will stay where they are at right now.

Learning to manage code bots is way easier if you know code. Managing code bots when you don’t know code leads to how SWEs have been mismanaged in the past.

yevhen_builds
I am talking about SWE specifically. I personally feel like I am technical manager that manages agents for coding.
vconnor
Let's say I have 2 years to invent a new career before I'm broke.

Not a junior either, but I'd rather do anything else than be expected to turn into a middle manager for AI agents. That's not why I got into computers.

GaryNumanVevo
I've basically been a personal hedge fund manager for the better part of 2 years. I'm still working as a SWE because it's interesting, if I get laid off I'll be retiring.
cousinbryce
I’m a data engineer at a massive bureaucratic institution. Working on full stack so I can build cool stuff for people
joshstrange
> I believe there will be a need for far fewer of us.

I disagree. Throughout the history of computing the number of SWE's has gone up and they have become, overall, more capable [0]. That hasn't cause a need for fewer of us, in fact the demand remains overall strong.

I predict instead it will drive the need for more of us rather than less. And potentially even "better" (or at least healthier as I see it) jobs. What I mean by that is, instead of outsourcing (locally or abroad) companies will be able to bring someone in-house. In the past, dropping the load on 1-2 people would have been untenable, with LLMs/AI a number of things become plausible. And this scales to every level. The company that previous outsourced their development and could have hired 3-5 developers (but that wasn't enough) can now consider hiring them.

Yes, the larger corporations might decide they can get the same done with fewer employees, or they might decide to do more with the same.

I do think a number of SaaS tools might be in more trouble if companies decide to just build in-house alternatives that are custom for their exact needs. But perhaps SaaS will adapt to "source available" or some other kind of way to allow easier extension of their core offering so that companies just build a sidecar or thin layer over the core that covers their needs better than a "one size fits all" SaaS ever could.

Perhaps this is too rosey of a view of the future but it's one that I think is at least partly backed by the history of the industry.

[0] And at least what they're able to produce, even if you disagree about the quality.

jrowilliams
> I do think a number of SaaS tools might be in more trouble if companies decide to just build in-house alternatives that are custom for their exact needs. But perhaps SaaS will adapt to "source available" or some other kind of way to allow easier extension of their core offering so that companies just build a sidecar or thin layer over the core that covers their needs better than a "one size fits all" SaaS ever could.

Very good point, something that I've encountered at my company already.

joshstrange
> something that I've encountered at my company already.

On the receiving end, as in losing customers to this? Or is your company replacing tools they used to pay for?

I'm very interested in how other places are handling this.

jrowilliams
The latter, our company is replacing tools we used to pay for with bespoke software.

Another interesting one is the hosting of the open source equivalents of SaaS products on on-prem hardware. Turns out that agents take very well to infrastructure-as-code setups, making managing deployments of software far less work than it used to be. So we can use X database (albeit an older and less feature-rich version) on our own infrastructure that we can easily scale/tailor to our needs without paying for the enterprise SaaS version

joshstrange
Yep, personally I'm running even more self-hosted stuff than I was previously. The cost to setup/test is so much lower. I can, and have, instructed an agent "Setup XYZ self-hosted project on my ABC server and document it in my Obsidian Vault" many times. Sometimes I tear it down later if it's not what I wanted but in the past there was a much higher bar that had to be cleared to consider adding new stuff. Even when the setup was relatively easy.

I hope that open source software and/or slightly modified open source software sees a huge surge because of this. A move to "open core" products (free or paid) that then companies argument/extend as they need for their specific use-case.

ex-aws-dude
IMO its better to just wait and see how it shakes out rather than overreacting

Think about people who left the industry in the dot-com era and how that probably seemed smart at the time

jrowilliams
There's definitely something to be said for trying to keep hysteria to a minimum
skyberrys
I've always loved animals, and I would love to quit and own a farm where I breed and care for horses. I also like cats a lot I could see myself working as a cat therapist. My children tell me I am a very good cook too and should start a business selling crepes for breakfast. None of these ideas are as lucrative as writing SW though. I'm not technically trained as a SWE though I do write it, I'm a hardware person.
sdevonoes
Umm, I think the ones displaced will be product owners tbh. Think about it: with AI we need people that know a bit about everything. A bit about the product itself, the users, the tech, the platform, etc. AI fills in the details, but it’s important to not have many unknown unknowns. So, it’s easier for engineers to learn more about the product (good engineers already know quite some about the products they support) than for product owners to learn more about the tech.

One good engineer plus AI > one good product owner plus AI. The former can build, the latter can’t (unless we are talking about very simple toy products or prototypes)

iamirzhan
I might be too optimistic, but I really don't think there is any reason SWE jobs would disappear. Yes, AI is a great tool, makes you more productive and we can do more with fewer people, but the thing is there’s always more work to do. In opposite, when we're willing to do more, there are more ideas, opportunities opens and hence more jobs.

Unless AI automates SWE completely. Which I don't think will happen. If AI is that powerful, it would be a completely different world.

Though I think there are some things that are true right now.

* The way SWEs work is changing a lot (though I think it's just a progress that always happened) and a lot of people might not like it

* Currently there is a lot of uncertainty and FOMO in a lot of companies, how to operate, what to prioritise. Hence it might be not a great time, sometimes there are decisions like layoffs, not hiring junior developers, etc. I think that stabilises with time.

iExploder
> Unless AI automates SWE completely. Which I don't think will happen. If AI is that powerful, it would be a completely different world.

This is stated main goal many are persueing at this point.

dieselgate
I have a non-CS engineering degree and am working towards taking the EIT exam. It’s not much and is entry level but steps towards other engineering work outside tech.