Earlier quoted context omitted.
The history of the last 250 years is inventing new professions as old ones are automated away. I expect that to continue.
Like doordashing and pokemon card reselling.
Don't forget OnlyFans and streaming.
Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
401–410 of 809 posts
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's equally true for any type of system. Frontend isn't inherently easier than other systems, so i was just wondering why you singled it out. To me AI just seems better at backends and database design
OK, my examples seemed like biased against frontend which was not the intention. The thrust was overall job prospects for people in software field. It is not that frontend is easy but it is definitely easy to get into . Considering there are far more frontend developers then say C++ system engineers or database designers so in sheer numbers they will be affect more.
Ah okay that's fair. In my country boot camps aren't a thing so frontend devs are rare and good frontend devs even more, so I think it depends on where in the world you are. We got an abundance of java devs here that i fear more for
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#403This is such a misleading title. The post isn't about software engineering not being a lifetime career, it's about this:
> If AI does turn out to make you dumber, why can’t we just keep writing code by hand? You can! You just might not be able to earn a salary doing so, for the same reason that there aren’t many jobs out there for carpenters who refuse to use power tools.
The argument the piece makes is that being a software engineer who insists on writing code by hand may no longer be a lifetime career.
I think the definition of "software engineer" is changing, and it's not even changing that much. We construct software to help solve human problems. We can keep on doing that, just now we get to do it more.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#404"You can! You just might not be able to earn a salary doing so, for the same reason that there aren’t many jobs out there for carpenters who refuse to use power tools."
I've long regarded myself as more a master craftsman than an engineer, and I've had the pleasure of working on one-of-a-kind or first-of-a-kind things. Perhaps fortunately I'm near retirement. But I genuinely enjoy the coding: it's how I engage with the problem and learn to understand it. It's also how I ensure that I'll be able to read the code and find things in the code base when I come back to it years later. Last thing I want to do is spend my days overseeing someone (or something) else's code. If I wanted to be a manager of programmers I could have done that years ago.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been told the past four years that AI is coming for my job. And thats just not true. Its no closer to that than it was 4 years ago.
> Its no closer to that than it was 4 years ago. There are people and companies out there releasing entire vibe coded projects and for some upwards of 80% of the code they develop is AI-assisted/generated. Since around the end of 2025 and models like Opus 4.6, the SOTA has gotten good enough to work agentically on all sorts of dev tasks with pretty good degrees of success (harnesses and how you use them still matters…
> There are people and companies out there releasing entire vibe coded projects and for some upwards of 80% of the code they develop is AI-assisted/generated.
And how much revenue do they generate?
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It seems to me like all of these people are flocking now to healthcare fields. That seems totally unsustainable. Why? There will never be a shortage of sick/dying people. So medical staff, and also undertakers, aren't going anywhere.
Because most healthcare spending comes from tax dollars.
Is this a different route to the universal basic income scenario?
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the idea of being an employee is fundamentally changing. Not saying its good or bad but it's shifting to a more entrepreneurial phase where people have to step out of their 9 to 5s and find ways to deliver value that others want to pay for. We saw this pre-ai with uber and door dash. I think as AI automation dies down and most companies are competing at a near optimal level with the new tools we'll need human…
That's a lot of SV-speak. How exactly do people step into an entrepreneurial phase? They're at work in corporate settings with fixed defined roles. Most workplaces are not many-hatted-donning startup environments, but restricted roles where there are deliverables, deadlines, meetings, etc. Which leaves out of hours for "entrepreneurship" whatever that is. Github project work on the weekends? That's not possible for m…
>That's a lot of SV-speak. How exactly do people step into an entrepreneurial phase?
Almost half of U.S. employment is from small businesses (250 or less employees). That's means there's a lot of entrepreneurship happening already. I have lots of family running their own small businesses (trades), and it's a lot of work, and doesn't necessarily pay as well as a cushy corporate job, but what I'm trying to say is lots of people can and do start their own enterprise.
Yes, lots of them will fail at running their own business, but it's not like corporate jobs are getting any safer either.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#408Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…
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Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#409Multiple times per week I have the same conversation. It goes something like this: - AI will make developers irrelevant - Why? - Because LLMs can write code - Do you know what I do for a living? - Yes, write code? - Yes, about 2-5% of the time. Less now. - But you said you are a developer? - I did - So what do you do 95-98% of the time? - I understand things and then apply my ability to formulate solutions - But I ca…
This is a bit of glib answer. Most of the time is spent coding which encompasses typing, retyping, and retyping again. It also includes banging your head against the wall while trying to get one of your rewrites to work against and under-documented API. OP's formulation makes SWE sound like a purely noble enterprise like mathematics. It's more like an oil rig worker banging on pieces of metal with large hammers to ge…
This is far more true for junior and perhaps mid-career engineers, unless you're working in an extremely well-defined problem space (* see below).
When working as a SWE, the longer I did it (~30 years) more of my time was spent understanding the problem, the edge cases, how to handle the edge cases, how to do all of it affordable, on time, and within budget.
That's engineering.
What you're describing is "writing code". That's lower value than "solving the problem".
I imagine a response, "But agile development, etc."
Yep. Part of solving the often sometimes involves creating prototypes to determine the essential viability of the solution. But that's only part of it. Which prototypes do you write? How much time do you allocate to same before accepting it's a dead end (at least for now) and punting on it?
That's engineering.
Me probably coming across as a dick today? Well, I was diagnosed autistic a year ago, and I'm on extended sabbatical/unemployment (3 years now) due to autistic burnout. And masking is part of how I got the burnout.**
* Why would someone be paying for that when there is likely someone else already doing it? Unless you're the rare person who hopes to "disrupt" the competition).
** has me begging the question of why I write here at all. SMH. Why do I do what I do? No idea sometimes.
Re: Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've literally just started, what "over and over" do you refer to?
I've been told the past four years that AI is coming for my job. And thats just not true. Its no closer to that than it was 4 years ago.
I'm not sure how anyone would know if it's closer or not. There's been a lot of progress in LLMs over the last four years.