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by machdiamonds 953 days ago
It is delusional to think LLMs won't reduce the number of SWEs required. This should have been obvious from the first time you used GPT4.
3 comments

I don't think that's a given, the software pie itself could get much, much bigger than it is today and necessitate more SWEs in absolute numbers (Even if the % of SWEs at companies declines).
Rather than call people delusional, how about giving an example from the past of a technological advance that reduced the work needed to create computer programs, and consequently reduced overall demand for SWEs? I can think of plenty of advances that reduced the work involved in programming, but none that reduced overall demand for SWEs.
We keep adding more abstractions that would in theory reduce the number of SWEs required. We keep creating more complex and capable software instead and employing even more SWEs.