alt Hacker NewsIf you can direct AI and produce more value per $/time spent then a non software engineer directing AI to develop software then you still can produce a lot of value.
This should be the case now for anything that is not a prototype. The job has changed from "writing code" to "shipping software". A technical lead.
As AI gets more intelligent and the tooling around it develops and organizations figure out how to get it access to the data, the level of involvement needed for software engineers will decrease. Since the cost of developing software is plummeting, the amount of software being used is going to expand greatly- that will keep the technical lead positions available longer and also create more opportunities for consultant engagements.
Although someone can use AI to rewrite every software dependency and every paid piece of software, its still not worthwhile for them for most software, especially if the price of the software is low compared to the complexity it hides.
Users of a paid software product still need a human to be responsible for it.
As you develop your skills with AI, you now have the ability to develop your own software products. So there's an opportunity to become a small business owner. You didn't want to do these non-technical roles, but now you can continue to direct AI to automate all the aspects of the business.
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> If you can direct AI and produce more value per $/time spent then a non software engineer directing AI to develop software then you still can produce a lot of value.
Even if true (which I'm leaning towards that it is), when will companies realize this?
We could be in for a decade long software career recession until the effects of poorly managed and written software trickles down to lost customers and company bankruptcies. Bad decisions in large companies take a very long time to produce clearly visible effects.
> As you develop your skills with AI, you now have the ability to develop your own software products.
I think this is a dead end. We're quickly approaching a state where software is no longer a product that can be sold, but rather a tool used by someone selling a service.
If the market is filled with cheap products and a clone of your product can be easily made, then the survival of the business is in positioning, marketing, packaging the product, distribution, sales...
This makes the technical skills required but not sufficient part of the whole business and there are many businesses (like restaurants) that are bad businesses, because many people are willing to open a restaurant as a life-style choice even though most of them are not a good business. This influx of new competitors, make the current restaurant owners profit to go down, because of the increased competition that isn't purely market driven.
In the software world that means "a small product" won't have any moat & pricing power, and your competitors might be wiling to subsidise it for years as a side project, making the whole market suffer from profit erosion (an economic term) leading to zero profit long-term equilibrium.
For example try charging per message (as previously charged by SMS/MMS) in the era of subsidised messenger apps with free calls and messages.
This makes the unique position of SAAS software with 9$/month subscription highly doubtful in the future.
> the cost of developing software is plummeting
For now, until the frontier models decide to stop losing money and pass the real costs onto the consumers.
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> If you can direct AI and produce more value per $/time spent then a non software engineer directing AI to develop software then you still can produce a lot of value.
Sure, in the same way a skilled photographer can take better photographs on an iPhone than I can. Nevertheless, because any twit can take good enough photos on an iPhone, the need for the specialized skills of an expert photographer are much less than in, say, the 1930s.
That's why AI is dangerous. It's not because it makes human skill useless, it's because it makes non-human skill good enough. When was the last time you hired an expert photographer, or skilled dressmaker, or a master cabinetmaker? Maybe once or twice in your life, because the iPhone camera, fast fashion, and Ikea are good enough.