Yeah; a few weeks ago a family member asked me if I was concerned that AI is going to eat up all the software engineering jobs. I'm pretty unconcerned about it;

Yeah; a few weeks ago a family member asked me if I was concerned that AI is going to eat up all the software engineering jobs. I'm pretty unconcerned about it; but I am a little more concerned that hiring decision makers will think that it can. One of the reasons why I strongly feel that we're headed at lightspeed into an AI winter is: there's so much hype happening in the space right now that we're already seeing companies say things like "we're able to downsize 70% of department X thanks to productivity increases from AI". These efforts will almost universally and inevitably fail; not necessarily because AI will never be capable of doing what some business leaders believe it can, but because it can't do this yet, with agency. In a few very limited cases we'll see companies use this as an excuse to just lay off excess fat in the org, but it'll be far more common to see a pattern of layoffs + we're AI now -> profit up -> that's weird this company isn't developing nearly as many new things... -> re-hiring equal to or exceeding the layoffs -> company is never the same. AI hype right now is burning bridges with underdelivery; we're making too many big bets too early. In 20 years it'll be the case that someone will be trying to sell a substantially more capable AI system, and some business leader says "that looks awesome, lets give it a try in this random inconsequential corner of the business no one cares about" because 20 years ago her predecessor bet the farm on GPT-4, lost the company billions over the next decade, and shareholders are now far more hesitant; despite the fact that, in 20 years, it might be The Time.