If we somehow get AGI, it'll change everything, not just SWE.
If not, my belief is that there will be a lot more demand for good SWEs to harness the power of LLMs, not less. Use them to get better at it faster.
Actually now is really good time to get to SWE. The craft contains lots of pointless cruft that LLM:s cut through like knife through hot butter.
I’m actually enjoying my job now more than ever since I dont’t need to pretend to like the abysmal tools the industry forces on us (like git), and can focus mostly on value adding tasks. The amount of tiresome shoveling has decreased considerably.
A lot of the tasks that used to take considerable time are so much faster and less tedious now. It still puts a smile on my face to tell an LLM to write me scripts that do X Y and Z. Or hand it code and ask for unit tests.
And I feel like I'm more likely to reach for work that I might otherwise shrink from / outside my usual comfort zone, because asking questions of an LLM is just so much better than doing trivial beginner tutorials or diving through 15 vaguely related stack overflow questions (I wonder if SO has seen any significant dip in traffic over the last year).
Most people I've seen disappointed with these tools are doing way more advanced work than I appear to be doing in my day to day work. They fail me too here and there, but more often than not I'm able to get at least something helpful or useful out of them.
If someone expects the LLM to be the senior contributor in novel algorithm development, they will be disappointed for sure. But there is so, so much stuff to do to idiot savant junior trainees with infinite patience.
Unfortunately the latter is the vast majority of software jobs.
If someone is building web shop from scratch because he wants to sell some products, he is doing something wrong. If someone builds web shop to compete with Shopify he also is doing something wrong most likely.
It's very important to human progress that all jobs have poor working conditions and shit pay. High salaries and good conditions are evidence of inefficiency. Precarity should be the norm, and I'm glad AI is going to give it to us.
Btw communism is capitalism without systemic awareness of inefficiencies.
It totally does. Regulation is basically opposed to capitalism working as designed.
C.f. East India company. Then imagine them with modern military and communications tech.
This is equally true for any alternative system to capitalism.
They won't go broke, but landing a $175k work from home job with platinum tier benefits will be near impossible. $110K with a hybrid schedule and mediocre benefits will be very common even for seniors.
Would there be reasonably priced houses in Seattle/SF? Can't see that happening
Yet I'm comparing these to the problems I solve every day and I don't see any plausible way they can replace me. But I'm using them for tasks that would have required me to hire a junior.
Make that what you will.
I hope I’m wrong, and it instead shows that more pay and fewer hours lead to a better economy, because people have money and time to spend it… and output isn’t impacted enough to matter.