Is software engineering a dead end? Are the jobs going away?
That was the question on August 22nd, in front of the Generative AI Vadodara group at Jeavio’s offices. My answer is no.
Here is the trap. We correlate output with capability. I’m an engineer, so my job is the code. I’m a product manager, so my job is the PRD. We are obsessed with the final result.
The final result is the part the model commoditizes. The model may write the code, but it relies on the engineer to tell it what to do. By itself it has no desires, no volition. It’s an inert pile of parameters.
The model doesn’t know why the code must be written. It doesn’t know the thought process in your head, the discussions with your team, or the tradeoffs you weighed before you prompted it. The discussion, the negotiation, the design: all of that takes far longer than actually writing the code, and it was true well before the LLM era. Writing the code was and remains the shortest part of the job.
So we freak out about code generation and forget everything else. Writing code was never the purpose. The purpose is finding solutions, which the models can then manifest.
And if writing code is easy, demand for software explodes. Think of how often we’ve said we can’t build that, it will take too long. That constraint is gone. Suddenly there are more problems worth solving. That is the bull case for software engineering over the next 20 years.
There is a catch. Most of us earned a seat in those discussions by writing years of unglamorous code first. That is exactly the work being commoditized. If you are starting out today, the first rung of the ladder is harder to reach than it was for me starting 22 years ago.
Which makes it the job of those of us who run engineering teams. Building a path for junior engineers, and helping them develop the skills and the networks to thrive in the AI age is now a core part of leadership. Get that wrong, and the bull case only pays out for the lucky few.
This is an excerpt from a longer talk and panel discussion. Thanks to the Generative AI Vadodara Meetup Group (follow them here – Jeavio AI Meetup) for having me.
