> My take for SE roles is that it's a combination of AI giving enough gains[0] to reduce head count requirements It is not giving enough gains. It is only givi

> My take for SE roles is that it's a combination of AI giving enough gains[0] to reduce head count requirements It is not giving enough gains. It is only giving ammunition to board members and execs to cut headcount. What is really happening is that the current cohort of tech companies has been living in the era of free money for so long that they have forgotten competent practices. They only thing they learned was more headcount==more revenue. This was partially possible by delivering large number of features and charging for each one of them e.g. AWS has a ton of useless crap services. Of course that is horseshit logic that only worked in the era of free money. And of course market caps going up, up, and away was fantasy. At some point, markets shift and cannot be tapped any further. And that is what is causing headcount reduction - there are no saleable features to produce. There is still a large amount of maintenance to do. But companies loathe paying for maintenance. They'd rather have customers suffer and quit than pay up front for headcount to maintain what has been built in the last decade. They would much rather scam customers with poor billing practices than provide quality and support. Thus, we end up with lower headcount, lower quality, and a generally third world quality existence - all because execs want to protect margins over anything else aka shareholder primacy.