People have been saying this every few years for decades. First it was RAD, project managers are going to take your job. Then it was outsourcing, India is going to take your job. Then it was wfh, some slacker anywhere in the world can take your job. Now it's AI, ChatGPT wants your job.

There's always a kernel of truth to things -- if you are counting on some bare minimum tech skill like knowing enough HTML to make a small biz web site, or coding carefully specified mocks into JavaScript, you're going to be vulnerable to these kinds of disruptions. But real software engineering is a lot more than that -- you need to be the bridge between people and problems and the technology that can solve them. When AI can do that on its own, we'll be out of a job but so will everyone else.

I think it's one of the few things that will stay relevant for a long time to come. We lost the skills of handcrafting compilers because of compiler generators. We will lose some skills to AI assistants. But the demand for the ability to coax output out of machines will be there in the foreseeable future.

My LinkedIn inbox says otherwise.

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