[daxfohl]

Yeah for the better part of a generation, our best and brightest minds have been wasted on "increasing click count". If that can all be AI from here on out, then maybe we can get actual humans working on the real problems again.

[drivebyhooting]

The problem was always funding. All those bright minds went into ads because it paid well. Cancer research, space, propulsion, clean, energy, etc.. none of those paid particularly well. Nor would they have afforded a comfortable life with a house and family. The evisceration of SWE does not guarantee a flourishing in other fields. On the contrary, increased labor supply with further pressure, wages, downwards.

[daxfohl]

Agreed, though I think we all knew that the software industry payscales were out of whack to begin with. Fresh college grads that can barely do a fizzbuzz making twice as much as experienced doctors.

What I don't know is, say the industry normalizes to roughly what people make in other engineering fields. Then does everything else normalize around that? i.e. does cost of living go down proportionally in SF and Seattle? Or does all the tech money get further sucked up and consolidated into VC pockets and parked in vacant houses, while we and our trite "cancer research" and such get shepherded off to Doobersville?

[drivebyhooting]

Expensive private schools, luxurious ski vacations, and exclusive neighborhoods existed long before the ascendance of software engineers. These had been the purview of investment bankers, high-powered, lawyers, realtors, etc..

For a brief time with big tech, it seemed like intellectual prowess could allow you to jump the social strata. But that arrangement need not exist. It’s perfectly possible, indeed likely that we will revert to the old aristocratic ways. The old boys’s network ways.