The next two years of software engineering

I don't have a college degree either. I am about 50. I have never been unemployed and have had high paying software dev jobs my entire adult life. Your claim that the lack of degree is the only thing holding you back is very much incorrect.

I suspect the problem is elsewhere and you are unwilling or uncomfortable to discuss it.

I‘m leaning more towards significant job impact.

It’s hard to tell though not just because it’s inherently uncertain where this goes but also because those closest to it are also the least likely to view it objectively.

So near impossible to find someone clued up but also not invested in a specific outcome

Oh I couldn't disagree more. Europe is on the verge of full-blown fascism. Europe has Reform (UK), AfD (Germany) and National Front (France) as well as Hungary.

Europe created the Russia-Ukraine problem by giving their energy security to Russia. Interestingly, this is a (super) rare win for the first Trump administration: forcing Europe to build an LNG port in 2018 [1] and warning against the dangers of dependence on Russian natural gas. This warning has been completely vindicated.

Europe has stagnant wages, a declining social safety net (eg raising the retirement age in France), a housing affordability crisis in most places (notably exlucding Vienna and there needs to more attention on why this is), inflation problems and skyrocketing energy costs. It's the same 1930s economic conditions that gave rise to fascism last time.

Europe has the same rising anti-immigrant rise in response to declining material conditions that the US hass. In Europe's case it's against Syrians and North Africans. In the UK this also included Polish people.

France is really a perfect example here. Despite all the economic problems you have Macro siding with Le Pen to keep Melenchon and the left out of power.

All of this is neoliberalism run amok and it comes from decisions in WW1, WW2 and post-WW2, most notably that Europe (and the US) decided the biggest threat was socialism and communism. And who's really good at killing communists? Nazis. Just look at the resume of Adolf Heusinger, an early NATO chair [2].

Europe has also outsourced their security to the US via NATO. And NATO is on the verge of collapse. There's a lot of thinking that Congress won't allow Trump to withdraw from NATO, as many in his administration want to do, but NATO could well splinter if Trump takes Greenland.

What happens to Europe with an expansionist Russia and no US security guarantee?

Oh and speaking of worker protections, what happens when the price of bailing out European energy or security issues is the privatizing of your otherwise universal healthcare? It was rumored that parts of the administration wanted the UK to privatize the NHS as part of a post-Brexit trade deal. 15 years of austerity has primed the population to accept this kind of thing.

Many Europeans (rightly) look down on the insanity that's currently going on in the US but at the same time they don't realize just how dire the situation is in Europe.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/germany-to-build-ln...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger

You're making some strong assumptions about other industries which are incorrect. All of that exists elsewhere and is not so unique to software as you may think. Things are never that simple. Your argument reads more as a justification to the status quo and gatekeeping rather than being objective. I'm sure the doctors would have said something similar for their profession too but it doesn't necessarily mean it is true. Software engineering is a demanding profession but it is not that special as we like to think it is.

One option that didn't seem to be discussed in TFA is turning away from AI.

There's an implicit assumption in the article that the coding models are here to stay in development. It's possible that assumption is incorrect for multiple reasons.

Maybe (as some research indicates) the models are as good as they are going to get. They're always going to be a cross between a chipper stochastic parrot and that ego inflated junior dev that refuses to admit a mistake. Maybe when the real (non-subsidized) economics present themselves, the benefit isn't there.

Perhaps the industry segments itself to a degree. There's a big difference in tolerance for errors in a cat fart app and a nuclear cooling system. I can see a role for certified 100% AI free development. Maybe vibe coders go in one direction, with lower quality output but rapid TTM, but a segment of more highly skilled developers focus on AI free development.

I also think it's possible that over time the AI hyper-productivity stuff is revealed to be mostly a mirage. My personal experience and a few studies seem to indicate this. The purported productivity boost is a result of confirmation bias and ridiculous metrics (like LOC generated) that have little to do with actual value creation. When the mirage fades, companies realize they are stuck with heaps of AI slop and no technical talent able to deal with it. A bitter lesson indeed.

Since we're reading tea leaves, I think the most likely outcome is that the massive central models for code generation fade due to enormous costs and increased endpoint device capabilities. The past 50 years have shown us clearly that computing will always distribute, and centralized mainframe style compute gets pushed down to powerful local devices.

I think it settles at an improved intellisense running locally. The real value of the "better search engine" that LLMs hold today reduces as hard economics drive up subscription fees and content is manipulated by sponsors (same thing that happened to the Google search results).

For end users, I think the models get shoved into a box to do things they're really good at, like giving a much more intuitive human-computer interface, but structured data from that is handed off to a human developer to reason about, MCP will expand and become the glue.

I think that over time market forces will balance between AI and human created content, with a premium placed on the latter. McDonalds vs a 5 star steakhouse.