[Yokohiii]

> With LLMs, only the "best" engineers will survive, because nobody needs mediocre engineers anymore.

I don't think this is true.

A good engineer doesn't have infinite throughput. In my opinion the best engineers should be constantly bottlenecked because they solve difficult problems. They don't have time for grunt work. Every company needs less than perfect engineers, AI assisted or not.

[sigotirandolas]

Perhaps that's true of the top 5% engineers. But the question is if the top 40% of engineers can replace the bottom 60%.

The LLMs don't need to be perfect, they just need to be good enough so that the cost of fixing their code is lower than the communication overhead and the 'lost in translation' overhead from delegating tasks to mediocre engineers.

[Yokohiii]

I am sure the tech industry will try to further reduce headcount. The question is what jobs emerge. We already see companies laying off, just to hire "AI interns".

If AI + lower skill engineers turn out to be valuable, it also becomes more attractive for smaller companies and startups to do software or expand / inhouse software. Which is actually a good opportunity to level up, because many devs don't become great because they miss the chance to take responsibility. Which is harder in smaller companies.