[jazzyjackson]

Well, right, how does one become a senior engineer in a world where no one needs to hire a junior? I'm sure many other industries have experiences this already, where the only people who know anything retire and the people are left maintaining a system they could not rebuild such that when something goes wrong the only practicable choice is to replace it with new equipment.

That's where I see AI-written software going, write-once. Some talented engineer gets an AI system to create a whole k8s cluster to run an application and if any changes need to be made, bugs fixed, it will take another talented engineer to come in and have an AI write a replacement and throw out the old one.

Reminds me of this blog, The real value isn’t in the code [0], we're heading for a world that is only code and no one who knows what it does. But maybe it won't matter.

[0] https://jonayre.uk/blog/2022/10/30/the-real-value-isnt-in-th...

[weatherlite]

> Well, right, how does one become a senior engineer in a world where no one needs to hire a junior?

You don't. Unless the person is super brilliant I just don't think the industry needs many more new people, there are enough for the next 1-2 decades and after that humans will probably not be needed at all.

People should go where the demand is - medicine, education, policing or whatever it may be.

[paulryanrogers]

> People should go where the demand is - medicine, education, policing or whatever it may be.

'Where' is becoming an increasingly small niche with ever higher educational requirements.

[tmaly]

One could put a lot of time into open source or run your own side hustle to build up experience to a senior engineer level.

I don't see the corporate path being the best way given the circumstances.