Getting rid of software engineers could be the Doorman Fallacy[1]. How much of the job is writing new code? A lot of it is solve problems/maintenance, improvements, integrations with other systems, update existing implementation, delivery automation support.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorman_fallacy

This is a kind of narrow-minded view of software engineering that tries to say that there is no effort in this profession. I must say that there is effort in every job because people put their valuable time into it. I myself am in the robotics sector and I must say that I think the most damage and layoffs will be to the workers and drivers, and you will see this.

Well (human) written article, and I do sense all of this around me. Rather than go into denial, I think it would help everyone to discuss the core points: SWE is no longer a differentiated role that could gatekeep the way it did.

This means the newer SWEs have to now get some real-world connection / get their hands literally dirty to be valuable.

This article does a whole lot of "they" and "we" with which I strongly disagree.

Summed up by the last sentence who gets to reap the rewards if they go all to one group of people we are all f’d. Doesn’t matter if it is a slow or fast decline or if its programmers or clerks or whoever. If it is not democratised the world in 20 years will be a worse one for a big portion of the people. Anyone wondering if SWE are in trouble or what is part of the job and what not is missing the point and will keep blindly stumbling into the future.

As for SWE any good ones will be good enough to adapt to be useful in other jobs. It’s not just code also knowledge that is cheap now on a different scale. 50 years ago we built the 1st expert machines to codify knowledge. Now …

> A serious technological transformation is taking place. Denying its existence or impact would be about as useful as insisting the internet was a fad in 1998.

Well yes the internet was here to stay, but if you used that line of thinking to invest heavily in the DotCom sector at that time you were in for a rude awakening.

There’s a major difference between rejecting a technology and rejecting how it’s being packaged and sold.