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Comment by aetherson | Hacker News Reader

Comment here seem to largely miss the point of the article, which isn't saying that nobody will employ software engineers. It is saying that instead of the current model of:

1 very highly compensated staff+ engineer

4 highly compensated senior engineers

4 pretty well-compensated mid-level engineers

2 decently compensated junior engineers

The future might look like:

1 yet-more-highly-compensated staff+ engineer who specializes in architecture

10 decently compensated junior engineers who specialize in error-checking LLMs and detail-intensive technical work

In the same way that paralegals aren't unskilled people, and aren't paid terribly -- but they aren't doing the same job as the partner-level lawyer who's crafting the legal strategy, and they don't have a simple clean progression to eventually getting his job.

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My issue with this is that I have never, and I mean never, met a good software architect that wasn't also extremely good at the nuts-and-bolts of coding. I mean, I've interviewed people who called themselves software "architects" who could barely code a for loop, and these people are generally pretty useless beyond churning out PowerPoint diagrams.

I feel like this idea that you can have a software architect that just corrales a bunch of lowly code monkeys is a model that was invented by some MBA, or IBM (sorry to dig at IBM, there are some brilliant folks there but also some folks that for the life of me I can't figure out what they could be doing day-to-day). Will something like ChatGPT make this a viable model? Potentially, but I doubt it. If anything, I think it would be more difficult for a junior-level programmer to point out the subtle bugs that ChatGPT produces.

Like most software innovations in the past, I think that code generative AI will essentially lead to a Jensen's paradox for software - it will allow existing skilled programmers to just write more code, thus lowering the overall cost of code, leading to more demand.

How about

10 highly compensated middle managers and their staff who convinced the c suite to fire the senior engineers because of an AI article they read

2 poorly compensated junior developers with an AI bot replacing a 10 person team, who will get canned when SHTF so the 10 middle managers can jump ship to the next company with a padded resume. There are also 10 people because the middle managers got their friends positions from the savings due to the firing of the old engineers.

Not cynical enough.

How about

C suite to fire the senior engineers because a tier-1 consultancy convinces them they can deliver their product utilizing AI tools

Said consultancy knows AI can't deliver it, and uses mostly manual labor for it

All programmers end up at these consultancies

And the world keeps going as it thinks AI is solving everything, but it isn't. It's still Kumar in IT that's ssh'ing into the box.

A team with "1 yet-more-highly-compensated staff+ engineer" would also have a pipeline of people one step below that for progression. Usually people who are "yet-more-highly-compensated" are not easy to poach and don't tend to change their job. You have to develop them internally. E.g. most DEs and Fellows in tech companies rose through the ranks over decades. It's very hard to hire a DE from the job market.

The unintuitive thing about software engineering is that low-level implementation and high-level architecture are both equally sensitive to quality of talent (and equally impact your product quality and business outcomes) because every line of code is a business decision. That's a big reason why even entry-level SWE talent costs so much. There is no paralegal-level work in software - it's been automated away.

If that's what it's saying then it's just like every other blog post or Tik Tok video from someone clueless person who's never worked in tech.

10 to 1 juniors to "senior" would have any "senior" quitting on day 1. Even 2 juniors will takes up > 50% of a seniors time to corral. 10 of them would be like a mob of people all screaming at you.

Add into that mix an AI chatbot spitting out partially incorrect stuff to all 10 of these juniors that is completely unworkable.

Humans have trouble error checking each other's code. Imagine an army of devs who are expected to read and error check a machine. It's an absolute nightmare and fits the literal definition of bullshit job. But if it pays someone will do it. I dont know how one would hire an army of these sad folk though.

Industries need the hierarchical treadmill of juniors moving up to mid moving up to senior and so on in order to populate the top level. People can't just start there. The idea of 1 staff+ engineer and 10 juniors will only work if businesses are happy with people moving from junior straight to staff+. That seems unlikely to me.

It's missing a third group: the ML researchers developing the LLM. I'm not sure what the best analogy in the legal world is - the politicians writing the laws?

you're probably right (and thanks for breaking it down), but it's more fun to engage in doom porn!

Also the average pay still went up. Doesn't seem that bad a future.

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