Yes. That could be said for engineers as well.

If the business can no longer justify 5 engineers, then they might only have 1.

I've always said that we won't need fewer software developers with AI. It's just that each company will require fewer developers but there will be more companies.

IE:

2022: 100 companies employ 10,000 engineers

2026: 1000 companies employ 10,000 engineers

The net result is the same for emplyoment. But because AI makes it that much more efficient, many businesses that weren't financially viable when it needed 100 engineers might become viable with 10 engineers + AI.

Yes and no.

Five engineers could be turned into maybe two, but probably not less.

It's the 'bus factor' at play. If you still want human approvals on pull requests then If one of those engineers goes on vacation or leaves the company you're stuck with one engineer for a while.

If both leave then you're screwed.

If you're a small startup, then sure there are no rules and it's the wild west. One dev can run the world.

That assumes your backlog is finite.

Is the tech writers backlog also seemingly infinite like every tech backlog I've ever seen?

Yes. I have been building software and acting as tech lead for close to 30 years.

I am not even quite sure I know how to manage a team of more than two programmers right now. Opus 4.5, in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, can develop software almost as fast as I can write specs and review code. And it's just plain better at writing code than 60% of my graduating class was back in the day. I have banned at least one person from ever writing a commit message or pull request again, because Claude will explain it better.

Now, most people don't know to squeeze that much productivity out of it, most corporate procurement would take 9 months to buy a bucket if it was raining money outside, and it's possible to turn your code into unmaintainable slop at warp speed. And Claude is better at writing code than it is at almost anything else, so the rest of y'all are safe for a while.

But if you think that tech writers, or translators, or software developers are the only people who are going to get hit by waves of downsizing, then you're not paying attention.

Even if the underlying AI tech stalls out hard and permanently in 2026, there's a wave of change coming, and we are not ready. Nothing in our society, economy or politics is ready to deal with what's coming. And that scares me a bit these days.

We have been seeing this happen in real time in the past two years, no?

Yes. But they are now called managers.