[lowsong]

> you're admitting that businesses do see SWE as cogs in a wheel and seasonally try to replace them...

Not quite. I agree that companies will try to do this, but every company that has tried to treat engineering staff as replaceable units of person-hours has failed.

> Metrics, performance reviews, sprint velocity, delivery timelines, all orbit around observable artifacts because those are what management systems can actually track objectively and equitably. It's a handy abstraction just like looking only at the ins/outs of a logic gate as opposed to looking at the implementation and wiring.

Yes, and these metrics are, usually, worthless.

It's not that companies and managers will not try to replace engineers with AI. I'm sure they will. I'm sure many will be laid off because "AI does it cheaper now".

My point is that companies that have gone down this route in the past have failed, and AI is no different. Companies that lean strongly into AI as a workforce replacement will fail too.

[saint-evan]

lol but you have to first 'view' something as replaceable before yu try to replace it, no? So companies DO see SWEs as cogs and try but fail to actually make them replaceable, yes?

[lowsong]

It's not even as simple as "views as replaceable". It's pure economics. It's someone looking at a spreadsheet going "We spent a lot of money on SWE salaries, our financial results look better if we fire some of them. Is there a cheaper option?"

From that perspective, yes some management view SWE as replaceable. My argument is that all attempts to actually implement that have failed to date, and the most successful financial companies are staffed by upper management who know that to remove much of the SWE staff would doom the company in the medium term.

It's a move of either desperation ("we'll go bankrupt if we don't do this"), or short-sightedness ("if I cut 40% of headcount, our P&L will be better, which will result in better quarterly results, which is likely to increase share price, which gives me a bigger performance bonus. Who cares what happens after that."), or a lack of experience in managing software companies and watching this play out before.

AI, even if it lives up the hype, is no different.