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The big assumption being made here is that the software work involves really coding a lot. Not it doesn't. In my company, actual coding, design, logic etc all are only about 10% the overall work. Software engineers are not employed by technology companies alone. We call these tech companies technology vendors. The situation described in this article might be a bit applicable to these technology vendor companies, but not for non-tech companies who employ the bulk of the global software workforce. There is hardly any real logic or coding work involved. You would believe me if you work in a non-tech company. Most of your time goes into navigating the company's process, tools, and people. Yes, it is called People-Process-Technology for a reason. Even the word "Technology" here refers to engaging the tech vendors and consultants to get some work done, or just figuring out how to use a legacy software or constant chasing others to get dependencies resolved. Weeks and months pass by, waiting for a dependency to get resolved so that your last code commit could actually finish it's build. Tons of JIRA tickets and INCs would have flown around meanwhile which creates an imaginary realm of huge work and productivity - all resulting in a single line of code change getting tested. It could even be celebrated via huge email thanking every one (100s of people), making it look like a big achievement. The point is, AI doesn't replace junior engineer roles. Junior engineers are preferred for assigning all dirty drudgery, who can be blamed if things go wrong and who can give away their credit to bosses when things work well and who kind of flexible with good attitude. That's very attractive! Basically we hire people to own some risk and accountability. Distribution of work is primarily to distribute the risk, blame and accountability, not really to get the work done. Actual work is done by non-employee consultants in India, eastern Europe or Vietnam etc. For example, we don't use opensource because we can't hold someone accountable. The fact that opensource simply works, doesn't count. However if some vendor offers the same opensource tech with enterprise support or as a managed SaaS, we would buy that. |
Yes I know how to code and passed the whiteboard interview. I don't write lots of code everyday because that's not what the business wants from me. The business wants me to understand a large blob of legacy services and act like a normal human when someone in product ask for a change that I don't understand yet.
The main thing I believe AI is going to help me with is making decisions under uncertainity by processing large amounts of data and producing a context/environment that I am faster in.
Other people are going to drown in that context and be unable to act. My value is my decision making ability and my ability to talk to humans and find out what they want.
My value is not the production of text.