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Accounting mechanization is a good example of how unpredictable it can be. Initially there were armies of "accountants" (what we now call bookkeepers), mostly doing basic tasks of collecting data and making it fit something useful. When mechanization appeared, the profession split into bookkeeping and accounting. Bookkeeping became a job for women as it was more boring and could be paid lower salaries (we're in the 1800s here). Accountants became more sophisticated but lower numbers as a %. Together, both professions grew like crazy in total number though. So if the same happens you could predict a split between software engineers and prompt engineers. With an explosion in prompt engineers paid much less than software engineers. > the number of accountants/book-
keepers in the U.S. increased from circa 54,000 workers [U.S.
Census Office, 1872, p. 706] to more than 900,000 [U.S. Bureau
of the Census, 1933, Tables 3, 49]. > These studies [e.g., Coyle, 1929;
Baker, 1964; Rotella, 1981; Davies, 1982; Lowe, 1987; DeVault,
1990; Fine, 1990; Strom, 1992; Kwolek-Folland, 1994; Wootton
and Kemmerer, 1996] have traced the transformation of the of-
fice workforce (typists, secretaries, stenographers, bookkeepers)
from predominately a male occupation to one primarily staffed
by women, who were paid substantially lower wages than the
men they replaced. > Emergence of mechanical accounting in the U.S., 1880-1930 [PDF download] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844... |
Alternatively, I’ve thought a bit about this previously and have a slight different hypothesis. Businesses are ran by “PM types”.the only reason that developers have jobs is because pm types need technical devs to build their vision. (Obviously I’m making broad strokes here as there are also plenty of founders that ARE the dev). Now, if ai makes technical building more open to the masses, I could foresee a scenario where devs and pms actually converge into a single job title that eats up the technical-leaning PMs and the “PM-y” devs. Devs will shift to be more PM-y or else be cut out of the job market because there is less need for non-ambitious code monkeys. The easier it becomes for the masses to build because of AI, the less opportunity there is for technical grunt work. If before it took a PM 30 minutes to get together the requirements for a small task that took the entry level dev 8 hours to do, then it made sense. Now if AI makes it so a technical PM could build the feature in an hour, maybe it just makes sense to have the PM do the implementation and cut out the code monkey. And if the PM is doing the implementation, even if using some mythical AI superpower, that’s still going to have companies selecting for more technical PM’s. In this scenario I think non-technical PMs and non-pm-y devs would find themselves either without jobs or at greatly reduced wages.