AI is removing the middle class of software engineering? • Hacker News Board

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#821

Post by CM30 » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:46 AM UTC

e2le wrote: post #432

overgard wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of think the whole "Learn to Code" push of the 2010s was one of the worst things that happened to our industry. Call me a gatekeeper if you want but, we ended up with a lot of people that just can't do the job. The problem is our industry mostly doesn't have any sort of reasonable mentorship or apprenticeship culture, so we've always left it to the engineers to teach themselves. Sink or swim. The problem is th…

> Call me a gatekeeper if you want but, we ended up with a lot of people that just can't do the job. Increasingly I am of the opinion that software engineering aught to be a licensed profession, similar to civil engineers, medical professionals, or lawyers. A board of peers to hold you accountable and a licence that can be revoked at any time. Additionally, legislation could be written to require such licensed indivi…

Eh, I've never been a fan of licensing simply because software engineering is a vast field with huge differences in the impact your work might have.

Like sure, if you're writing software for medical professionals, or lawyers, or aviation companies then I can see that being something you'd want people licensed for. A major bug in a pacemaker or plane's autopilot system is a huge deal that could injure or kill a lot of people.

At the same time though, a lot of software engineering/programming work is extremely low stakes, and I think expecting that to be licensed would be kinda ridiculous. Having someone need to be licensed to create a small business WordPress site, or local desktop software to solve a personal need, or most video games in general feels kind of absurd. Do people need to be licensed to make say, Minecraft mods or hack a game from the 80s?

The difference with the legal and medical industry is that if someone is incompetent or screws up in those fields, there are almost certainly going to be negative, if not dire consequences for those involved. If someone screws up in tech, then there may be dire consequences in some industries/sub-fields, or no/positive consequences in others.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#822

Post by BatteryMountain » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:49 AM UTC

Chickens are coming home to roost boys. All that tech debt needs to be repaid NOW. All your holes (security) needs closed. You will not able to "fix it in production next week" anymore. Only "real" developers will be able to keep up with the onslaught that has just begun. The industry will consume itself in the next two years.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#823

Post by watwut » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #538

bdangubic wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such test filter out the obvious frauds. if you need garbage like leetcode to filter out "obvious frauds" you got a whole lot of problems in your company/team/...

A colleague of mine came to me for advice. He wanted one of those high dollar jobs at a well-known MegaCorp. He knew a leetcode test was used by them. I suggested that his top priority was to study the leetcode books for the next 3 weeks. I told him those three weeks would be the best ROI he'd ever make. He did so. He aced the test. He got the job with a huge offer. He agreed that the ROI was out of the park! P.S. I'…

Your friend does not sound like an obvious fraud. He sounds like someone talented and capable of learning.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#824

Post by dijit » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

overgard wrote: post #375

Syntaf wrote: post #35

> bad engineers were always a liability This part of the article hits home for me. With AI, "bad" engineers can now amplify their "bad" engineering x10 across the organization. The most egregious of these cases for me is often long tenured engineers who have lost interest in the craft, creating a dangerous combination of having enough merit to ship but not enough interest to make what they ship _good_. I am still a f…

I kind of think the whole "Learn to Code" push of the 2010s was one of the worst things that happened to our industry. Call me a gatekeeper if you want but, we ended up with a lot of people that just can't do the job. The problem is our industry mostly doesn't have any sort of reasonable mentorship or apprenticeship culture, so we've always left it to the engineers to teach themselves. Sink or swim. The problem is th…

“learn to code- everyone should code-“ pushes always seemed like a way of trying to suppress wages for tech workers.

I’m not in it for the money, and that I can make a good (better than most) living from it is just pure luck and I am genuinely thankful.

But there are lots of people in it only for the money, and they will be very disappointed when it dries up, because the #1 thing these bosses want is for us to have less leverage.. They want it even more than they want revenue.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#825

Post by watwut » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #745

zzrrt wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this imply that, had your friend not taken your advice, he would have failed and thus been an "obvious fraud", but a mere 3 weeks transformed him from fraud to competent programmer?

The leetcode test is just a screening device. Passing it means you then go through the real interviews. Also, if someone is unwilling to do the work to pass the leetcode test, they likely don't have the ambition to get the high pressure jobs.

As if these were high pressure jobs ... or had any rational reason to be high pressure jobs.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#826

Post by unified101 » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:57 AM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #808

unified101 wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think A is not happening for a software engineer's role, then you are mistaken. We are all scrambling to figure out what else we need to do (and so are many other roles).

> If you think A is not happening for a software engineer's role, then you are mistaken. En masse, I argue not. More productivity for engineers would not be met with mass layoffs if engineering production was why value was being added. On the contrary, other industries have had to hire back talent becsuse companies were too aggressive cutting people and needed that work to be done. But I'm not an oracle. I can only s…

You're reading too widely for a simple point I'm making: what an engineer did in Aug 2025, they can do in a fraction of the time in Aug 2026.

Everything else is something else you care about, but producitivty is simply proven for almost every engineer on the above point.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#827

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:57 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #151

Technology has been doing this for decades. I think a lot of our "K shaped economy" discourse is about the bifurcation of the upper middle class creating downwardly mobile educated young people. Nobody in my wife's immediate family finished college. She and all of her cousins are quite indisputably better off than their parents. My father in law drove a forklift at a soup factory. My sister in law is studying to be a…

Will it ever stop, though? I mean, why even try if social mobility has been destroyed? If we're the permanent underclass now, then there's no point in struggling against any of this.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#828

Post by unified101 » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:58 AM UTC

StableAlkyne wrote: post #795

unified101 wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ask Claude if it makes sense to do X This is a fantastic way of working with agents in my experience. It's like have a peer architect who can challenge you and help you improve. You're projecting your own feelings and fears by calling it infantalizing.

There is a world of difference between using it as a "peer architect" and outsourcing your entire thought process to it.

You're treating asking questions on everything as "outsourcing your entire thinking". It isn't.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#829

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #142

mikert89 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the field is basically over as a long term career unless you are truly exceptional. It will become very easy to build most software, and the upper end will be filled with the top people in the country/from abroad. Wages are certainly going down for most software roles

> It will become very easy to build most software We keep hearing this, but where is the Photoshop killer written by a gas station attendant? Where is the PayPal alternative written by a retired nurse? Over and over we're told that software is now trivial to write, and Claude is evidently writing some billions of lines of code a day, but where are the results? Where is the vibe coded app toppling the legacy hand-code…

> Where is the PayPal alternative written by a retired nurse?

I'm a doctor and I'm building my own EMR system.

I've also been a hobbyist programmer for over a decade, but the point still stands because without LLMs I wouldn't have the time to even try it.

Re: AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?

#830

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 10:17 AM UTC

jselysianeagle wrote: post #463

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "learn to code" and software bootcamp craze always baffled me. Like what other profession markets themselves as "Hey, our job is so easy that any schmuck off the street can enter the career with 4 months of training." Practically every other job I can think of at a similar salary level has entrance requirements (e.g. grad school admissions exams), extensive and expensive training, a lengthy apprenticeship p…

> Like what other profession markets themselves as "Hey, our job is so easy that any schmuck off the street can enter the career with 4 months of training." For one, the industry never did professionalize to begin with, certainly not in the way accountants, lawyers etc did. We never had any real body that could certify proficiency, which is what contributed to companies having to resort to leetcode and other such sty…

I’m pretty sure that the IEEE tried that, and it never took off.

Regulatory bodies generally need a raison d’etre to exist (like people will die, or go to jail, if we screw up). They also need to provide clear benefits (to the licensees), like medical practice, or CPA licenses.

I don’t think that ever worked, for software. Companies have been hiring anyone that can spell “algorithm,” for a couple of decades, and making money, hand over fist.

In my case, I’m sort of grateful. I have no “on paper” qualifications (high school dropout, with a GED), yet managed to have a long career, working with some pretty heavy-duty pros.