It's not at all clear that software engineering is safe. Software is an arms race. You need new software if your competitors are writing new software, but any

It's not at all clear that software engineering is safe. Software is an arms race. You need new software if your competitors are writing new software, but any organisation can coast for a long time on its “legacy systems”. That’s what we saw after the dotcom crash. If there is a prolonged economic downturn and the software industry just goes into maintenance mode, it will be very, very unlike anyone who wasn’t there last time will understand.