[jwestbury]

> they'll enable engineers to become vastly more productive (10-100x)

Will that come along with a 10-100x pay increase?

Why should I care about being so much more productive, when it won't come with any pay increase (and will likely come with a pay decrease)?

[kbelder]

A general 100x productivity increase, if there's no change in pay, will result in massive price decreases and increases in selection and variety.

[gmt2027]

I'd say stop thinking in terms of employment. When you are 100x more productive, you won't need to be a cog in someone else's machine to build products end to end. There'll be less value for the founder types who assemble capital, teams, and middle management to coordinate them. Think of the professions and trades where people run their own practice: doctors, lawyers, accountants, plumbers and electricians. Once sufficiently skilled, they can strike off on their own and deliver value directly to customers. Sometimes with the help of apprentices and trainees. There are a lot of problems to solve today where the cost of software is too high to be practical.

When our tools get so good that our employers don't need us, we won't need them. In a market where the engineers are competing with the manager class whose core skill is politics and bullshit, who would you bet on long term?