6 ms·
Software engineering as an occupation grew because of static analysis and GCs (literally why the labor market is the size that it is as we speak); the opposite
by imbnwa 3y ago
Software engineering as an occupation grew because of static analysis and GCs (literally why the labor market is the size that it is as we speak); the opposite appears to be the outcome of AI advances.
- glasss 3y agoThe same happened with accountants and spreadsheet software, the number of accounting jobs grew. The actual work they performed became different. I think a similar thing is likely to happen in the software world.
- imbnwa 3y agoTech has already learned there’s not enough real frontier left to reap the bounty of(removing zero interest rates that incentivize mere flow of capital). This stuff is being invested in to yield the most productivity at the least cost. There will either be a permanent net decrease in demand or, being so high level, most openings will pay no more than 60-70K in an America (likely with reduced benefits) where wages are already largely stagnant.
- glasss 3y agoI think there is definitely merit to your statements. I believe the future of the average software developer job involves a very high level language, API integration, basic full stack work with a lot of AI assistance. And those roles will mostly be at small to medium businesses who can't afford the salaries or benefits that the industry has standard in the US. Almost every small business I know has an accountant or book keeper position which is just someone who had no formal education and the role is just managing QuickBooks. I don't think the need for formally educated accountants who can handle large corporate books decreased significantly, but I don't have any numbers to back that up. Just making the comparison to say I don't think the hard / cool stuff that a lot of software developers love doing is going away. But these are just my thoughts.
- samatman 3y agoI'll take the other side of that bet. It's reasonable to expect that sometime relatively soon, AI will be a clear-cut aid to developer productivity. At the moment, I consider it a wash. Chatbots don't clearly save me time, but they clearly save me effort, which is a more important resource to conserve. Software is still heavily rate-limited by how much of it developers can write. Making it possible for them to write more will result in more software, rather than fewer developers. I've seen nothing from AI, either in production or on the horizon, that suggests that it will meaningfully lower the barrier to entry for practicing the profession, let alone enable non-developers to do the work developers do. It will make it easier for the inexperienced to do tasks which need a bit of scripting, which is good.
- visarga 3y ago> I've seen nothing from AI, either in production or on the horizon, that suggests that it will meaningfully lower the barrier to entry for practicing the profession, let alone enable non developers to do the work developers do. Good observation. Come to think of it, all examples of AI coding require a competent human to hold the other end, or else it makes subtle errors.
- imbnwa 3y agoHow many humans do you need per project though? The number can only lower as AI tooling improves. And will employers pay the same rates when they’re already paying a sub for their AI tools and the work involved is so much more high level?
- doktrin 3y agoI don’t claim to have any particular prescience here, but doesn’t this assume that the scope of “software” remains static? The potential universe of programmatically implementable solutions is vast. Just so happens that many or most of those potential future verticals are not commercially viable in 2024.
- 3y ago