The next two years of software engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#201

Post by abc123abc123 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #161

maciejzj wrote: post #143

TBH, it all feels like a huge gamble at this point. Neither skills, education, institutional ties, nor current employment can guarantee a stable foundation for life. This hits harder depending on how much money, social capital, or debt you accumulated before this volatility began. If you’ve paid off your debts, bought a house, and stabilized your family life, you’re gambling with how comfortable the coming years will…

I felt a lot safer when I was a young grad than now that I have kids to support and I can't just up and move to wherever the best job opportunity is or live off lentils to save money or whatever.

True. This is one of the best arguments for not having kids. I could never imagine putting myself in that uncertain situation. Much better to reduce those risks, and focus on yourself.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#202

Post by SecretDreams » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

abc123abc123 wrote: post #201

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt a lot safer when I was a young grad than now that I have kids to support and I can't just up and move to wherever the best job opportunity is or live off lentils to save money or whatever.

True. This is one of the best arguments for not having kids. I could never imagine putting myself in that uncertain situation. Much better to reduce those risks, and focus on yourself.

Having kids is a personal choice. The stress of having to support them is real and it might mean, at times, you sacrifice more than you would have without kids.

It's been entirely worth it for me and I cannot imagine my life without kids. But it's a deeply personal choice and I am not buying or selling the idea. I would just say nobody is ever ready and the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational. But not wanting them because of how it might change your own life is a completely valid reason to not have kids.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#203

Post by thfuran » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

Esophagus4 wrote: post #197

lovich wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I know is that firing half my employees and never hiring entry level people again nets me a bonus next quarter. Not really sure why this article is talking about what happens 2 years from now since that’s 8 times longer than anything anyone with money or power cares about.

Hmmm I know this it’s true because if management only thought quarterly, no one would ever hire anyone. Hiring someone takes 6+ months to pay off as they get up to productivity.

But the management immediately gets street cred for increasing headcount and managing more resources.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#204

Post by swah » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #161

maciejzj wrote: post #143

TBH, it all feels like a huge gamble at this point. Neither skills, education, institutional ties, nor current employment can guarantee a stable foundation for life. This hits harder depending on how much money, social capital, or debt you accumulated before this volatility began. If you’ve paid off your debts, bought a house, and stabilized your family life, you’re gambling with how comfortable the coming years will…

I felt a lot safer when I was a young grad than now that I have kids to support and I can't just up and move to wherever the best job opportunity is or live off lentils to save money or whatever.

There must be "dozens of us" with this fear right now. I'm kinda surprised there isn't a rapid growing place for us to discuss this... (Youtube, X account, Discord place..)

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#205

Post by michalsustr » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

babblingfish wrote: post #20

My experience hasn't been LLMs automate coding, just speeds it up. It's like I know what I want the solution to be and I'll describe it to the LLM, usually for specific code blocks at a time, and then build it up block-by-block. When I read hacker news people are talking like it's doing much more than that. It doesn't feel like an automation tool to me at all. It just helps me do what I was gonna do anyways, but with…

My experience (with minfx.ai) has been that it is very important to build a system which imposes lots of constraints on the code. The more constrained you can make it, the better. Rust helps a lot in this. Thanks to this, for the first time in my career, I feel like the bigger the system gets, /the easier/ it is to develop, because AI can discover and reuse common components. While human would struggle searching for these and how to use them in a large codebase. Very counter-intuitive!

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#206

Post by Kilenaitor » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

francisofascii wrote: post #179

hncoder12345 wrote: post #53

Sometimes I wonder if I made the wrong choice with software development. Even after getting to a senior role, according to this article, you're still expected to get more education and work on side projects outside of work. Am I supposed to want to code all the time? When can I pursue hobbies, a social life, etc.

>I made the wrong choice with software development. I wonder what the best decision would have been. What job is AI immune and has a stable 40 hour week, no overtime, with decent pay. Teacher? Nursing?

Neither teachers nor nurses only work 40 hours and no overtime. :')

Definitely something that requires social/interpersonal skills though will be the thing that winds up being AI immune. Humans are social creatures so I assume there will always be some need for it.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#207

Post by pydry » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

afro88 wrote: post #177

> The bottom line: Junior developer hiring could collapse as AI automates entry-level tasks If AI automated entry-level tasks from today, that just means "entry-level" means something different now. It doesn't mean entry-level ceases to exist. Entey-level as we know it, but not entry-level in general.

Entry level jobs have been in decline for years though.

I used to work on teams which were 50% entry level. Then just one. Then all senior teams became the norm.

This all happened after I became senior but before AI came along.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#208

Post by Esophagus4 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #203

Esophagus4 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm I know this it’s true because if management only thought quarterly, no one would ever hire anyone. Hiring someone takes 6+ months to pay off as they get up to productivity.

But the management immediately gets street cred for increasing headcount and managing more resources.

I can't tell if we're doing like a sarcastic joking thing where we're making fun of management, or if you really believe this. If we're joking around, then haha. If you really believe this to be true, then you have a warped view of reality.

The street cred doesn't come from managing more resources, the street cred comes from delivering more.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#209

Post by mikemarsh » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

gassi wrote: post #21

> Addy Osmani is a Software Engineer at Google working on Google Cloud and Gemini Ah, there it is.

Yep, it never fails. Here's another prediction for "The next two years of software engineering"; AI vendors will start to utilize their senior devs' personal domains to write their advertising pieces to attempt to mitigate scrutiny when such things are posted to social media.

Re: The next two years of software engineering

#210

Post by ambicapter » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #158

kasey_junk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jevons paradox and it’s not a fallacy. It’s an observable behavior. The problem is it’s not predictive.

> Jevons paradox and it’s not a fallacy. It’s an observable behavior. The problem is it’s not predictive. I was referring specifically to this point, which, IMHO, is a fallacy: >>> There seems to be effectively infinite demand for software from consumers and enterprises so the cheaper it gets the more they buy. There is no way to use the word "infinite" in this context, even if qualified, that is representative of re…

As counter-anecdata, I have a family members that are growing businesses from scratch and they constantly talk to me about problems they want to solve with software. Administrative problems, product problems, market research problems, you name it. I'm sure they have other problems they don't talk to me about where they're not looking for software solutions, but the list of places they want software to automate things is never-ending.