alt Hacker NewsExactly. I see software engineering going the way of accounting or lawyer.
Every business needs an accountant and a lawyer on hand. In the past, hiring one software engineer to build custom software for your small or midsized business was not worth it. What can one software engineer build? Maybe an MVP in a year? No chance it was worth it for the vast majority of businesses. Outside of corporations or tech companies, employing a software dev was simply not a thing.
Nowadays, your kindergarten might employ a full time or part time software engineer to build custom software. One dev can build a lot more a lot faster.
That said, I think the average or below average dev won’t earn $200k/year anymore. However, the top devs will earn more than ever. If AI increases an average dev’s productivity by 10x, then it will increase a top tier dev’s by 100x.
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“ However, the top devs will earn more than ever. ”
No they won’t. Productivity does not determine the wage rate.
Because there is so much money for kindergarten teachers, paying an extra salary for a software dev for every kindergarten will certainly lead to better outcomes. The computer programs will make up for the lost teacher economically by teaching the children instead of people, raising the market share of my local kindergarten, or enticing people to have more babies. \s
It's even better than accounting or lawyers, because good software engineers can build incredible businesses from scratch instead of being tied to the number of businesses that exist
SWEs are more leveraged than ever and we've seen comp drastically rise for top performers