Interesting takes. No doubt it’s hard out there for both employers and employees.
I think it’s a matter of perspective. I have yet to see an Engineering org at any firm declare they’ve reduced eng/dev headcount some form of AI has usurped and replaced. Replacing an engineer of any level with any AI come obvious risks - you just give it access to db, DATA, other systems and your code base. Those reasons are major deterrents enough for any firm. Perhaps, instead of hiring jr devs and such, open roles for people who can prompt the fvck out an AI to code for you.
Just my quick 2 pesos
would love to get
@swag thoughts
I am definitely seeing a pattern where tech cos are in their post-growth stages and paring back tech hires. It's not Covid so much as moat-defending bureaucratic bloat in Big Tech: people are playing more defense than offense these days, to be honest.
And the idea that AI is replacing software developers is indirectly true, but not directly true. Companies are shelling out millions for Ai infrastructure and services, not wanting to have their CEOs fired for not investing in that now. And this is AI that hasn't proven its business value yet, and CFOs are managing their P&Ls by cutting operational staff to fund it. With a back justification and finger-crossing hope that they won't need as many developers in the future.
I'm more in the school to believe that a lot of the skills of low- and mid-level engineers are going to be commodified. But gen AI isn't reliable and still needs to be audited, validated, tested, etc. More senior engineers will likely see their value-added skills actually increase for that 60% of their job that isn't mindless coding.
But let's be clear here: a software engineer should really be spending only about 30-40% of their time doing actual coding. It mostly should be spent in requirements clarification, design, project planning and estimation, and coordination with data, QA, product, marketing, and everybody else. None of that is getting automated by AI anytime soon.
And senior engineers are always doing crazy crap like creating new frameworks, adopting new languages, optimizing core services. These are all the things there isn't much data for you can find in a StackOverflow dump. So senior engineers would be smart to be careful about what they publicly share on github and on forums, for example, because AIs will train off of that.
There's a lot of hubris out there, and investors hate FOMO. So get your umbrellas and expect the storm of b.s. to continue for a bit until a few smart companies realized they overindexed on a dev-less future with all their hopes pinned on AI magic. Inflation is still high and businesses will see erosion in their profits, which will make them need to competitively invest in growth and new ideas again on the offensive in smaller measures.