Feeling exactly the same way. And TBH this comes from a feeling that we never respected our profession and our fellow engineers. I mean I know no other engineering discipline where best practices and tools were changing every 3 years. I also know no other engineering discipline where getting older is anathema instead of a badge of expertise. We behave like we were in fashion business rather than engineering.

So. Yes. On one hand I'm shiting my pants because that's the only way I know of making some money. On the other hand I'm saying to myself, to hell with it all.

PS: There should be a sister thread to this with alternative careers for former SW engs.

Actually the profession is already taking big hit. Expecting at least partial replacement by LLMs is _already_ one of the reasons for the reduction of new jobs. Actually _replacing_ developers is one of the killer apps investors see in AI.

I'd be impressed if the profession survived unscathed. It will mutate to some form or another. And it will probably shrink. Wages will go down to the levels that OpenAI will sell their monthly pro. And maybe 3rd world devs will stay competitive enough. But that depends a lot on whether AI companies will get abundant and cheap energy. IIUC that's their choke point atm.

If it happens it will be quite ironic and karmic TBH. Ironic as it is its our profession very own R&D that will kill it. Karmic because it's exactly what it did to numerous other fields and industries (remember Polaroid killed by instagram, etc).

OTOH there's no riskier thing than predicting the future. Who knows. Maybe AI will fall on it's own face due to insane energy economics, internet rot (attributed to itself) and what not.

Good comment! I see all these arguments in this post, and then think of the most talented journeyman engineer I know who just walked away from Google because he knew both AI was coming for his and coworkers jobs and he wasn’t good enough to be past the line where that wouldn’t matter. Everyone might be the next 10x engineer and be ok… but a lot aren’t.

>> LLMs aren't making the high quality products,

And who cares exactly? The only real criteria is whether the product is good _enough_ to bring in profit. And rightly so if you ask me.

Also, far too many products build by human _experts_ are low quality. So, in a way we're more than ready for the LLM-quality products.