> All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs
While many of them are mistaken, the much bigger problem is for all the early career developers, many of whom will never work in the field. These people were assured by everyone from professors to industry leaders to tech writers that the bounty of problems available for humanity to solve would outpace the rate at which automation would reduce the demand for developers. I thought it was pretty obviously a fairy tale that people who believed in infinite growth created to soothe themselves and other industry denizens suspecting the tech industry hadn’t unlocked the secret to infinite free lunch, but in reality are closer to the business end of an ouroboro than they realize.
Just as the manufacturing sector let its Tool and Die knowledge atrophy, perhaps irreversibly, the software business will do the same with development. Off-shoring meant the sector had a glut of tool and die knowledge so there was no immediate financial incentive to hire apprentices. There’s a bunch of near-retirees with all of that knowledge and nobody to take over for them, and now that advanced manufacturing is picking up steam in the US again, many have no choice but to outsource that to China, too.
Dispensing with the pretenses of being computer scientists or engineers, software development is a trade, not an academic discipline, and education can’t instill professional competence. After a decade or two of never having to hire a junior because the existing pool of developers can serve all of the industry’s needs, suddenly we’ll have run out of people to replace the retirees with and that’s that for the incredible US software industry.
For another thing the owners of the data centers may not do so well if their wildest dreams fail to come true, and if they don't happen to make enough money to replace the hardware before it wears out.
I’m not saying AI isn’t useful or won’t get more useful, but the entire business side of it seems like a feedback loop of “growth at all costs” investment strategies.
While many of them are mistaken, the much bigger problem is for all the early career developers, many of whom will never work in the field. These people were assured by everyone from professors to industry leaders to tech writers that the bounty of problems available for humanity to solve would outpace the rate at which automation would reduce the demand for developers. I thought it was pretty obviously a fairy tale that people who believed in infinite growth created to soothe themselves and other industry denizens suspecting the tech industry hadn’t unlocked the secret to infinite free lunch, but in reality are closer to the business end of an ouroboro than they realize.
Just as the manufacturing sector let its Tool and Die knowledge atrophy, perhaps irreversibly, the software business will do the same with development. Off-shoring meant the sector had a glut of tool and die knowledge so there was no immediate financial incentive to hire apprentices. There’s a bunch of near-retirees with all of that knowledge and nobody to take over for them, and now that advanced manufacturing is picking up steam in the US again, many have no choice but to outsource that to China, too.
Dispensing with the pretenses of being computer scientists or engineers, software development is a trade, not an academic discipline, and education can’t instill professional competence. After a decade or two of never having to hire a junior because the existing pool of developers can serve all of the industry’s needs, suddenly we’ll have run out of people to replace the retirees with and that’s that for the incredible US software industry.