LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do

> I'm still employed and I see myself employed for a foreseeable future. But I don't know what to think about the long-term ... Maybe I should consider transforming my woodworking hobby into a profession.

This one is notable for having all the clues pointing to why that's not the end-state this is headed toward, and yet... still not quite see it.

> I have no domain expertise that another Sr. engineer steering an LLM cannot match.

It's clear he's developed a significant competence in "steering an LLM" but the depth and value of that aren't apparent yet. After ~70 years, software development is now in the early stages of its first tectonic disruption. In the moment, these kinds of tech disruptions mostly appear to be displacing jobs but, historically, we understand the displacement is one part of a larger shift that's vertically compressing roles, functions and labor value. One steam shovel doesn't just displace dozens of pick-axe swinging diggers, it changes the roles, functions and competencies required across the entire supervision and management stack of "make tunnel through mountain" from the crew bosses and site managers to the tunnel engineers and business owners.

The author seems to be successfully navigating this shift but is still mid-disruption, so he and his management aren't yet able to see all the new competencies required or appreciate their value because it's all so new and still evolving. The rapid shock of agentic coding LLMs is especially disorienting because it's the first dramatic disruption in the field.

> review the code and steer the robot.

Historically, it's not surprising those few words are bearing so much weight and unappreciated value. Steam power was a similar shock to every field which relied on earth-moving and shaping. The big machines were quickly deployed, but it took quite a while for all the disruptions to both new and existing roles, functions and necessary competencies to be understood and appropriately valued. I imagine some top pick-axe swingers who'd graduated to being crew bosses and site foremen ended up driving or directing early steam shovels. In the first months they probably had little appreciation for the tremendous amounts of tacit new knowledge and practical expertise they accrued while keeping the steel beasts working. They were too busy being both amazed at the sheer power and frustrated by the constant scalding burns, tip-overs, blown boilers, landslides (too much weight, too little support) and cave-ins (dug too much tunnel, too fast with too little scaffolding), etc.

A big difference in the analogy is the first 100,000 steam shovels weren't sold at ~1/10th their actual cost and simultaneously delivered to job sites worldwide in six months. Software engineering is also unlike earth-moving and tunnel digging, in that the full costs and consequences aren't as visible or immediate as cave-ins and avalanches. The prices of 'steel beasts' are already going vertical with no end in sight and, over the next 18 months, I suspect "management" is about to gain a more viscerally accurate appreciation of the catastrophic costs of digging 'too much tunnel, too fast' absent the close supervision of highly skilled experts in directing all that newfound power constructively and not destructively. Between the skyrocketing full cost of operation and the consequences of poorly managed, non-expert execution - we'll start to see the broad outlines of the new equilibrium take shape.

In the steam era it over a decade for the ecosystem to understand how to even draw a new org chart accurately, label the boxes and appropriately value proven competency where it mattered. The faster the disruption, the longer it can take for all the pieces to rebalance and stabilize around a new equilibrium. Today, the author doesn't know all that he already knows and doesn't yet have the visibility to see how the new domain competencies he's rapidly accruing are creating a different kind of role that could be even higher value.

Customers may build the software they need entirely in-house or via prompt-engineer consultants, without the need to buy software tools like today. It could be a very very different world.

We don't need to know the entire knowledge base of mankind to want or know what to do next. It points to an entirely separate architecture than LLM.

Not really. It will be a cuttthroat landscape, and the scope wont matter as much anymore. First because everyone else will equally be able to throw LLMs at the scope, but also because the scope has natural limits: your market fit, customer expectations, and (for software/hw products) physical world/manufacturing limitations.

They'll want to reduce their margins.

First, the 0% figure is not true. People do write stories, play instruments or draw pictures.

Second, everybody who really feels a desire to express themselves creatively has akready been able to do so. Nothing was stopping you from writing poems, drawing pictures or picking up an instrument. Recording music has never been so easy. The "problem" is, of course, that it takes some effort. LLMs seem to provide a convenient shortcut, but you effectively skip the whole artistic process.

IMO it's better to either engage with existing great art or make an honest and humble attempt at creating your own art. You will learn so much more about music by trying to learn the piano or guitar than by prompting Suno.