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Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#11

Post by charlie0 »

aurareturn wrote: post #4

I'm going to make an optimistic and contrarian prediction: there will be even more jobs for software engineers in the future. Current companies will hire fewer new grads and layoff older engineers. However, I believe AI will make it far cheaper for new software companies to develop their products. Therefore, we will have more software companies spring up. Those companies will in turn, hire more software engineers. Fo…

Yes, but the increase in supply with likely decrease the wages for most (but not all) engineers as software itself get further commoditized.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#12

Post by aurareturn »

charlie0 wrote: post #11
aurareturn wrote: post #4

I'm going to make an optimistic and contrarian prediction: there will be even more jobs for software engineers in the future. Current companies will hire fewer new grads and layoff older engineers. However, I believe AI will make it far cheaper for new software companies to develop their products. Therefore, we will have more software companies spring up. Those companies will in turn, hire more software engineers. Fo…

Yes, but the increase in supply with likely decrease the wages for most (but not all) engineers as software itself get further commoditized.

Maybe in the distant future, yes. But I don't think the digital transformation has peaked yet. If there is 20% more demand for software engineers (like my example above), then I don't see wages decreasing.

When we have AGI that can completely replace engineers, then yea, maybe. But I'm not accounting for that because all bets are off if/when we have AGI. We'll have to start getting into weird scenarios at that point. For example, our wages could decrease but services/products are far more abundant and better, leading to a better quality of life despite a decrease in wages.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#13

Post by charlie0 »

Prompt engineering along with being able to describe problems exceptionally well will become important.

Just the other day I needed to write a complex script using a library I knew very little about. I knew "what" I wanted to do and that the library could solve the issue, but did not know enough about the lib to to solve it. I wrote pseudo-code and ChatGPT was able to generate a working script on the first shot.

I predict more of our work will shift towards describing problems well and knowing less specifics about certain libraries.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#14

Post by akdev1l »

charlie0 wrote: post #13

Prompt engineering along with being able to describe problems exceptionally well will become important. Just the other day I needed to write a complex script using a library I knew very little about. I knew "what" I wanted to do and that the library could solve the issue, but did not know enough about the lib to to solve it. I wrote pseudo-code and ChatGPT was able to generate a working script on the first shot. I pr…

> Prompt engineering along with being able to describe problems exceptionally well will become important.

Sounds like writing code

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#15

Post by charlie0 »

aurareturn wrote: post #12
charlie0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the increase in supply with likely decrease the wages for most (but not all) engineers as software itself get further commoditized.

Maybe in the distant future, yes. But I don't think the digital transformation has peaked yet. If there is 20% more demand for software engineers (like my example above), then I don't see wages decreasing. When we have AGI that can completely replace engineers, then yea, maybe. But I'm not accounting for that because all bets are off if/when we have AGI. We'll have to start getting into weird scenarios at that point.…

If "intelligence" becomes a service, it means that things are easier to build. If things are easier to build, then it becomes harder to develop moat because every app becomes easier to copy. Like Peter Thiel said, "competition is for losers". Wages will decrease in the face of lots of competition as everyone begins to compete on price.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#16

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

akdev1l wrote: post #14
charlie0 wrote: post #13

Prompt engineering along with being able to describe problems exceptionally well will become important. Just the other day I needed to write a complex script using a library I knew very little about. I knew "what" I wanted to do and that the library could solve the issue, but did not know enough about the lib to to solve it. I wrote pseudo-code and ChatGPT was able to generate a working script on the first shot. I pr…

> Prompt engineering along with being able to describe problems exceptionally well will become important. Sounds like writing code

The bubble has got to burst eventually. I just hope I'm retired by then

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#17

Post by aurareturn »

charlie0 wrote: post #15
aurareturn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in the distant future, yes. But I don't think the digital transformation has peaked yet. If there is 20% more demand for software engineers (like my example above), then I don't see wages decreasing. When we have AGI that can completely replace engineers, then yea, maybe. But I'm not accounting for that because all bets are off if/when we have AGI. We'll have to start getting into weird scenarios at that point.…

If "intelligence" becomes a service, it means that things are easier to build. If things are easier to build, then it becomes harder to develop moat because every app becomes easier to copy. Like Peter Thiel said, "competition is for losers". Wages will decrease in the face of lots of competition as everyone begins to compete on price.

The vast majority of startups fail to find a moat and eventually fail completely. It didn't stop VCs from investing. It didn't stop people from starting startups.

Perhaps those failed startups would have been viable if they could have built and maintained the product with 10 engineers instead of 100.

So instead of a single large software product that might not fill specific niches well, we might have a medium size product and many smaller products that fill more niches in the category.

For example, Clerk.com auth supports React mostly. But what about Vue or Svelt? Someone can come along and say, I can build that for Vue and Svelt and be economically viable because I build it much faster with fewer engineers leveraging AI.

A quick Linkedin search says Clerk.com has 112 employees. What if I can build an alternative for Vue and Svelt with just 10 employees?

Not being able to maintain a moat just means that software engineers will be switching to different jobs more frequently. It doesn't mean that the overall software market will decrease.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#18

Post by gautambay »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #9
gautambay wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Appreciate the data points and insight. Do you have a perspective on whether this will exacerbate the shortage of senior engineers in a few years, if way fewer new people enter the profession in that time period? Or will it be okay since the need for humans will reduce commensurately?

Exacerbate unless the tools get much better. Really, I don’t think they fully replaced the juniors as only some of the job is code generation. A lot of basic support and edge case handling is falling on the intermediates who often now aren’t producing much of anything due to the support burden. Many of them are dissatisfied.

In that case, feels like the current trend is unsustainable and should reverse once the intermediates eventually revolt? WDYT?

Have both your companies explicitly stated that the freeze on entry-level hiring is because of copilot?

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of the entry-level software engineering job?

#19

Post by beoberha »

I don’t think there’s going to be much change if any in the next 5 years. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when I see people say LLMs can replace software engineers. Maybe if you’re writing basic CRUD web apps, but most systems have enough complexity that an LLM cannot currently ascertain. Not to say they’re not helpful - ChatGPT is jawdroppingly good at pointing out bugs in code. They’re going to make people more productive but not enough to impact the labor market and remove the need for junior engineers.

People aren’t hiring juniors right now because of the hiring freezes that are only beginning to thaw. Teams are understaffed after having to do more with less and need to hire people who can hit the ground running. The headcount for juniors will come.

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