Ask HN: Will SWE jobs become minimum wage positions in the near future? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Will SWE jobs become minimum wage positions in the near future?

4 pointsblindprogrammer9 comments

I frequently browse Hacker News and other tech-focused platforms, where I constantly encounter new AI tools supposedly designed to simplify technical tasks for the general public. It's reasonable to assume that these AI tools will continue to evolve, potentially rendering various jobs (including SWE roles) obsolete. Therefore, I'm curious: Is there a chance that SWE positions will soon become minimum wage jobs, similar to how ATMs largely replaced human tellers at banks?

Or do you think software development is a lot more specialized and, although AI will replace some of the jobs currently done by humans, it will also create new roles similar to how the rise of online retailers like Amazon or the advertising companies we're familiar with like Google and Facebook created new roles like "Network Engineer" or system administrator.

If this time comes where AI made SWE jobs a minimum wage job, what is your game plan, then?

Nope - COBOL was supposed to make programming a minimum wage job back in the 60s? 70s? RAD environments ditto (VBasic, Clipper, DBase, etc), 'No-Code' - ditto...

40 years later... I haven't been replaced.

Aside from all the tech. challenges with AI - the legal stuff hasn't been figured out yet. Epic is banning AI generated assets from their marketplace due to copyright concerns, Air Canada was just required to compensate customers for chat bot errors (so, how would that scale to banking? medical? much higher stakes), and we're still figuring out what the rules are around training data.

And that doesn't cover the tech. problems with hallucinations, bad code, etc etc.

I anticipate AI just being IDE++ (good for code exploration, generating 'skeleton's for programs, etc) for at least another 10 years. After that, it might be more capable. In short - AI still needs an 'expert' to vet its work :-D

ATMs did not replace human tellers at banks; they freed them up to perform other duties.

If something like that plays out with SWEs then we probably become more like a technical product manager.

I really enjoy the ATM analogy. Got me thinking.

You could also stretch out that analogy a little and draw a parallel for how AI can be seen in software engineering: both are tools that enhance, not diminish, human capabilities.

Calculators made complex calculations faster and more accurate, allowing for greater focus on higher-order problem-solving.

Similarly, I think AI that automates routine tasks can enable software engineers to concentrate on more complex, creative or strategic aspects of their work. I don't think they stop being software engineers, but they can do 'more' in a sense.

Agreed. I also think that human engineers have business context and domain experience that AI can’t yet replace. I see it as more of a tool to make SWE more productive.

Leveraging AI still requires being able to create and communicate the design of a system. My career has taught me that this is a skill which not everyone has.

I believe there are going to be jobs that become fairly low skill+low pay. But I'm excited about the possibility that more things become approachable as custom development. There's the possibility that more software development is being done: If a $50K custom development job can now be done for $1-2K, that opens up a lot of long tail revenue. Even if the AIs can do 80-90% of it, there's still going to be a 10-20% that needs somebody that knows what is going on. A rising tide buoys all ships.

The phrase I keep thinking of is: You aren't going to lose your job to AI, you're going to lose it to a human that can leverage AI.

I think that they probably won't be minimum wage jobs.

However, as more people become interested in software engineering and AI helps make basic tasks easier, the pay for these jobs will vary a lot. Ultimately, I expect this variation to consolidate around two primary AI-impacted groups.

- Those that sit high on the abstraction stack caused by AI, i.e. those developing, training and debugging new models.

- And those using AI to do their day to day SWE job.

There will be fewer jobs higher up the abstraction stack you sit, but the pay will probably be very competitive. The further down the abstraction stack you go, the lower the pay.

However, I don't believe software engineering roles will ever approach minimum wage levels as long as they require the ability to read, write, and comprehend code. In addition to understanding the problem at hand in the 'bigger picture' and devising scalable solutions.

If one's role is reduced to merely overseeing AI-generated code without actively engaging in problem-solving or considering alternative solutions, can such a position truly be considered software engineering?

I'm more worried ChatGPT is going to replace the CEO.

Your teller example is interesting because it reminds me of this great novel

https://www.amazon.com/Remember-me-God-Myron-Kaufmann/dp/B00...

where the protagonist is a Jewish person trying to work is way into Harvard and one of his friends is a WASP whose family runs a bank that managers to get him an entry job as a teller and he learns quite quickly that a bank teller is a dead-end job where you can get in trouble for doing things wrong but never get rewarded for doing anything right.

When has a software productivity tool ever decreased software jobs in aggregate? Every leap in software productivity to date has seen a subsequent increase in aggregate demand for software-related services. Sure, individual positions fade in and out. But overall, tools that improve efficiency and simplify technical tasks have historically led to MORE people working on technical tasks. Not less.

No.

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