alt Hacker News> You are assuming that the amount of work is finite, so more productive people implies fewer people are required. Is that the case though? Has it ever been?
How many horse farriers have you met? How many coopers, blacksmiths, or shoemakers?
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drTobiasFunke • today at 2:29 AM
Not a fair comparison. Unlike shoemaker or coopers who do ONE thing, a SWE doesnt do just one thing.. atleast in general. I churned through basic, logo, c, c++, java, c#, python, go and now agents. The executable building on single machine died when distributed systems came in. It again evolved when cloud took over. We have been reinventing our work every few years. Every job change requires us to learn new skills.
How much did a horse farrier have to learn if they switched their employers?
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They absolutely still exist just not in the US. Bad comparison IHMO. What they make is just imported into the US and they often work in factories in low wage countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia. They were just offshored