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

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.

But it might not be terribly fun to work in software anymore, at many (most?) companies. It's an *absolute blast* (IMO) to build software *for fun* now, but being a journeyman SWE, being squeezed through a slop-cannon shaped tube? Doesn't sound super fun, to tell the truth.

I see this reaction a bunch and I find it kinda puzzling tbh — for devs who really deeply love the act of programming, that makes sense, but if programming is the means to an end (a product, a tool, etc), I personally tend to find more pleasure in designing the system vs the details of typing code.