I've always loved animals, and I would love to quit and own a farm where I breed and care for horses. I also like cats a lot I could see myself working as a cat therapist. My children tell me I am a very good cook too and should start a business selling crepes for breakfast.

None of these ideas are as lucrative as writing SW. I'm not technically trained as a SWE though I do write it, I'm a hardware person.

> I believe there will be a need for far fewer of us.

I disagree. Throughout the history of computing the number of SWE's has gone up and they have become, overall, more capable [0]. That hasn't cause a need for fewer of us, in fact the demand remains overall strong.

I predict instead it will drive the need for more of us rather than less. And potentially even "better" (or at least healthier as I see it) jobs. What I mean by that is, instead of outsourcing (locally or abroad) companies will be able to bring someone in-house. In the past, dropping the load on 1-2 people would have been untenable, with LLMs/AI a number of things become plausible. And this scales to every level. The company that previous outsourced their development and could have hired 3-5 developers (but that wasn't enough) can now consider hiring them.

Yes, the larger corporations might decide they can get the same done with fewer employees, or they might decide to do more with the same.

I do think a number of SaaS tools might be in more trouble if companies decide to just build in-house alternatives that are custom for their exact needs. But perhaps SaaS will adapt to "source available" or some other kind of way to allow easier extension of their core offering so that companies just build a sidecar or thin layer over the core that covers their needs better than a "one size fits all" SaaS ever could.

Perhaps this is too rosey of a view of the future but it's one that I think is at least partly backed by the history of the industry.

[0] And at least what they're able to produce, even if you disagree about the quality.

I think the process is already ongoing for the juniors and new graduates? Now, speaking as a senior, a quite mediocre one, I wouldn’t be surprised if I can never find a similar job if I’m laid off.

With AI taking over coding, you can become more manager role instead of SWE itself.

You can run agents by yourself on your 9-5 and still make crucial decisions in software industry.

Definitely. Been thinking of police school (not in USA lol) or some other public service that is actually needed in the society.

I’m a data engineer at a massive bureaucratic institution. Working on full stack so I can build cool stuff for people

IMO its better to just wait and see how it shakes out rather than overreacting

Think about people who left the industry in the dot-com era and how that probably seemed smart at the time

I've basically been a personal hedge fund manager for the better part of 2 years. I'm still working as a SWE because it's interesting, if I get laid off I'll be retiring.

Let's say I have 2 years to invent a new career before I'm broke.

Not a junior either, but I'd rather do anything else than be expected to turn into a middle manager for AI agents. That's not why I got into computers.