I compare it to the engineer of the industrial revolution and it will continue to be the same until there is a fundamental shift in the way we transfer instruct

I compare it to the engineer of the industrial revolution and it will continue to be the same until there is a fundamental shift in the way we transfer instructions to computers. The biggest threat to the profession of software development is AI, when something can infer what a non-technical person means it will spell the end of the dedicated developer. Then much like the telegraph operator, the profession will disappear almost over night. That being said, a lot of professions will be gone just as quickly. Until them I would like to offer some perspective from someone who has been in the industry for some time and to have seen the tail end of the home computing revolution, the birth of the web and all the iterations till modern day. I had this discussion with a buddy that left software dev after the .com bust and the first wave of offshoring development jobs. He, having come from manufacturing was certain that offshoring spelled the end for US developers. Personally, I had a different outlook, one that we should all remember when we sit at the negotiation table and that is, it is estimated that 10-20% of the population is mentally competent enough to write software and I would say that is a pretty good estimation. Probably another 5-10% border on competency so at best 30% of the population even has the capacity to code. We know the old 1 in 10 rule, that for every 10 programmers you hire 1 will be really good. So that puts us at what 3% of the population being exceptionally good developers? Probably another 6% being above average. Probably in the range of 10-15% being competent and the remainder costing companies more money than they are worth in lost time from the good developers carrying them. So if you think about it somewhere around 9% of the world population is truly capable of good software development. And that is why despite the .com bust, the waves of offshoring and whatever will come before AI, the developer is one of the few bastions of the American middle class. It is by it's nature self limiting as far as competition goes.