"In 2021, being a good software engineer felt great. The world was full of software, with more companies arriving every year who needed to employ engineers to write their code and run their systems. I knew I was good at it, and I knew I could keep doing it for as long as I wanted to. The work I loved would not run out."
"the whole point of being a good software engineer in the 2010s was that code provided enough leverage to automate away other jobs. That's why programming was (and still is) such a lucrative profession. The fact that we're automating away our own industry is probably some kind of cosmic justice."
"As a staff engineer, my work has looked kind of like supervising AI agents since before AI agents were a thing: I spend much of my job communicating in human language to other engineers, making sure they're on the right track, and so on. Junior and mid-level engineers will suffer before I do."
A software engineer reflects on the dramatic shift in the profession between 2021 and 2026. In 2021, the field felt secure with abundant opportunities and clear career progression. By 2026, AI advancement threatens the industry's viability. The engineer acknowledges the irony that programmers built tools to automate other jobs, and now face automation themselves. Senior engineers like staff-level positions may survive by supervising AI agents, while junior and mid-level engineers will be displaced first due to cost efficiency. The critical question becomes whether tech companies will overshoot or undershoot AI capabilities, determining the industry's future trajectory and remaining opportunities.
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