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Hard times ahead for devs.
I think this underestimates demand for software. Large orgs will downsize. Orgs that couldn't produce software before or were paying large orgs expensive SaaS will hire engineers now. I think software focused orgs will have a hard time. Every org that has use for software, but couldn't afford a team of 5 to get the job done, will hire an engineer or two now, or consult with some awesome agency. Unless we're saying that high quality software will get grunt-shotted and maintain itself with occasional grunts now. In which case I think more than devs are going to have a hard time.
Forgive my continued advocacy for the devil, but devs-are-fucked is the only take I see in my timeline and I suspect it's
- easy to say by pointing at the stock market and block
- or, isn't saying enough
If devs are fucked, I think everyone else is fucked in short order. Unless one can argue this is a dev-specific breakthrough (which I struggle to imagine). Either human oversight/steering has value or it doesn't, and automating work via code, sans-inference, has value or it doesn't.
I'm not saying devs are fucked. I'm saying hard times. Think of it as the transitioning period between where the old boss sacks you and the future new boss needs a minute to figure out they actually need you and are ready to keep you employed.
It takes time to wrap your head around what you need; we do not blindly follow LLM slop business plans just like we don't just blindly follow every sexy sounding idea a consultant comes up with. Tradeoffs still exist and need to be thought through. Like I said above: filling up a backlog is easy. But it'll take a lot of time for organizations to figure out that they need a staff coder. And what this person would bring to the org as a whole. The transition at the org level is not in the "let's gooo" phase, at least not for the orgs I deal with.
I think that the good news for devs is that with the productivity increase and if time is used well, the impact one can have upon an organization is much greater, and thus personal value increases, not decreases. But the used well is the distinguishing factor in this, and that is not something I see much readiness for. So it'll take time. I'm sure it will be fine, but I expect a lot of torn clothes. Perhaps turbulent times would have been a better descriptor.
PS: sorry to contribute to the negativity. It's not what I meant to do. I'm just not buying the "everything grows" narrative. At least not in the short/mid term.
turbulent times
On that we align, and turbulence is hard for many people.
I'm just not buying the "everything grows" narrative. At least not in the short/mid term.
That's reasonable to me. I wish I could part out why we're all anticipating scary short/mid term turbulence when technology is improving. I want to believe it's the wake of the ZIRP pivot reaching shore. Otherwise I feel like I'm being asked to believe this round of technology is zero sum.
turbulence is hard for many people.
Yes. I just fear that people will be left behind, at least for a while, and I think that we should keep an eye on that. Look at the people more than the statistic. I'm sure GDP growth will be great.
I wish I could part out why we're all anticipating scary short/mid term turbulence when technology is improving.
I think it has something to do with the sunny picture being photoshopped vs reality not matching up. Ultimately the hype/fomo is the cause of this. Not the tech, not the potential application of it. Not the final outcome. If the process sucks, pain will be experienced. And I don't think that much pain will be experienced by those fueling the hype the most.
Otherwise I feel like I'm being asked to believe this round of technology is zero sum.
I don't believe that either.
I'm struck by how similar this is to loose money leading to malinvestments everywhere... just do things, with no or little concern for profitability or value-add
Yes. It's covered by overcharging on services most of the time. So you have a project, you price it for cheap baseline. But then any scope changes, annual licenses, hosted SaaS and operational services you price jackpot. That way yes, you make a loss on delivery, but on licenses, support and additional work packages you stay afloat.
All this was sustainable because that's what everyone did. You'd be dumb not to. But this is the real "fat" that is getting trimmed over the next few years. Fat income stream for delivering crap, or for highly overpriced really good stuff.
As soon as AI peoples stop being such yolo noobs and start focusing on how to not just ship quickly, but get into that lower time preference and ship with extreme quality, things will look bleak for everyone that is half capable. And if not, I will just do continue to do consultancy and put big vendors out of business with extremely high precision solutions, made by the customer, to solve their own bespoke problems.
Empower everyone!
Exactly. Speaking purely from a software R&D industry [1] perspective, filling up a backlog to keep devs busy is easy. Filling it with profitable work is much harder and there's been a ton of inefficiency in many companies regarding this already. But the cost to replace has been a moat, and customers have been extorted for years. I know, because I have been a C-level part of said problem for a part of my career.
This is why, after that existing backlog clears and we've upped service excellence to heights never seen before, there's going to be friction in terms of workload. We need to invent new features and new product lines. Add features that until now didn't make the cut. With each of these there is risk involved; risks we weren't willing to take before. If we go fully API-first or expose graphql (customers will ask for this because they wanna vibe code their own bespoke things on the platform we sold them) then we will see a dip in feature requests, so we'll even get less orders [2].
Development costs at an item level may go down and of course there is opportunity. But in a competitive landscape, where every player in an industry at once is doing this opportunity chasing, there will be a lot of losers too. The markets (unless more commie government measures bail out big software firms like done with Intel) will be relentless. And then, instead of having a sustainable business with a smaller team, we kept the same team, not trim any fat, and go under as a whole as the bloated dinosaur we have become. Now, instead of saving 40-60% of our jobs and 100% of the business, we lost it all. Customers will just vibe the replacement of whatever we thought was a moat.
And that's why I think Wall St. is right in selling overvalued software stonks, why Jack is right in trying to be an early mover now that he can be reasonably sure to use his local cluster of GLM-5 if Anthropic and OpenAI ever go bust, and why Oracle, another jobs-obese company that has for decades lived off the replacement-cost moat that is now gone, is reorganizing in much the same way.
Hard times ahead for devs.
Software/IT, per the claim in #1448839 (no source link tho) is the most affected industry of AI takeover right now. ↩
You'll get less orders because your entire company is now competing with bespoke AI-generated solutions on the customer side. Thus I think it would be audacious to claim the market wrong on putting software stonks on sale, i.e. #1441980 ↩