[darvinyraghpath]

Fascinating thought piece. While I agree with the thrust of the piece: 'that llms can't really replace engineers', unfortunately the way the industry works is that the excuse of AI, however grounded in reality has been repurposed as a cudgel against actual software industry workers. Sure eventually everyone might figure out that AI can't really write code by itself - and software quality will degrade.. But unfortunately we've long been on the path of enshitification and I fear the trend will only continue. If google's war against its own engineers has resulted in shittier software - and things start break twice a year instead of once - would anyone really blink twice?

[tartoran]

Maybe AI can't replace engineers but it surely can apply downward pressure on engineers' salaries.

[lodovic]

I don't believe that. Software has become so expensive in the last decade, that only very large enterprises and venture capitalists were still building custom applications (ymmv). LLMs make it cheaper and faster to create software - you don't need these large teams and managers anymore, just a few developers. Smaller companies will be back in the game.

[bluefirebrand]

> Smaller companies will be back in the game.

Smaller companies that can afford smaller salaries you mean?

I'm not sure that is at odds with what the post you were replying to said

[lodovic]

Smaller teams, not smaller salaries