Post

What's my advice, as An Old SWE, given <all this>? As a Jr SWE, I think it is in fact, still useful to force yourself to learn good algorithms and data structures and how databases work (like really) and how to code an inverted index by hand and all Stuff Claude can just Do For You. even in: foOM!

why? well first, the caveat: if you don't want to be a SWE, you don't need this at all, just learn to get good answers out of the models. and: we may not need anywhere near as many high-powered (and high paid) SWEs, soon. I have a prediction that we'll have a highly bimodal SWE distribution:

a smaller (than now) number of absurdly paid software veterans who know the insides of the algorithms, the models, the hardware, and know where the bodies are buried. They will be paid 7fig+ a vastly larger (way more than now) number of slop-cannons, -janitors, and -plumbers, paid fine: 50-100k

why do I predict this: the "Expertise" paper I keep referring back to, by Autor and Thompson, which finds that Jevons Paradox plays out in multiple directions simultaneously in the same profession, as the automation changes what tasks it commoditizes. so *do* you want to be a SWE?

There of course might be more than 2 modes. We could see the rising of a new profession of slopsultancies who help anyone from mom&pop shops up through John Deere and the govt of East Timor get bespoke software shit down with AI, and they'll pay for it. so... be ready to work with *people*, too.

Is there where the increase in FDEs ties in? “Now that you understand our stack, go to talk to customers about how they can incorporate our stack, help them do it, then bring back any findings to homebase”

100% This might be one of the new "modes" in the SWE distribution of the future: not paid 7fig, but not "50-100k" either - well paid, but you have to travel a bunch, go on site, learn about the customer's problems, figure out what slop-garbage is left over from the last guy, help fix, move on.