[taurath]

But embedded engineers are treated more like commodities nowadays already (except at the top or in specific niches like legacy banking software or HFT), because the industries that drove their day are also commoditized and outsourced. It’s relatively easy to hire.

Yes eventually web devs will be eventually commoditized, but that doesn’t mean the return of low level programmers persay.

[ThrowawayR2]

My take (and sorry if I hadn't articulated it well) was that it's better to be a commodity in an area that one enjoys working than to become a commodity in an area that one went into just for the career prospects and be trapped there later on if circumstances change. Beyond that, the effects of commoditization seem likely to be significantly worse for web development than systems engineering given that the barrier to entry is lower.

[taurath]

For folks that hate webdev they shouldn't do webdev unless they're not privileged enough to be able to pick and choose. Its a relatively good market and people are paid and treated well overall compared to most other industries as a whole.

[cellis]

It’s my firm belief that NLP will eat all software engineers; web, backend, mobile and eventually even the ML engineers themselves. Embedded programmers are simply translating business requirements ( natural language ) into architectures at the end of the day. To prepare for this don’t think in terms of “I’m an X engineer”, think in terms of “I can solve problems using X, or Y and unknown Z”, because, very soon, Z is coming to make both X and Y obsolete.

[clpm4j]

It's my firm belief that anyone reading this post will be dead and gone before Z actually arrives and makes X and Y obsolete.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The deal with embedded is that it's inherently associated with a business that has to actually make something. That entails a much higher headcount for all of the additional jobs needed for procurement, manufacturing, test, and more. You don't get to be a prima donna rock star in such an environment.