Y'all, what are we doing in software engineering at this point? Like, I think we all know that there's like a few elephants in the room. And, well, they're not really elephants because we are talking about them on like literally all the subreddits, they're all incredibly depressing. But basically, there are two issues, right? There's on the one hand, there's the subject of AI and how impactful that's going to be and how much it's going to decimate the industry. And then there's also offshoring. That's the other part, right? And I think when you're employed, you're able to just put your head down, just focus on what you're doing, just like crossing your fingers, you know what I mean? That'll you'll be able to retire before everything, you know, shit hits the fan, basically. For some of you guys that may actually be how it goes and you're lucky. But I do think like now that I am, right, I've been unemployed and I'm sort of looking around, I'm on LinkedIn like every damn day, okay, it's horrendous. I am starting to wonder like how this is going to pan out for me, right? Because first off, let's talk about AI, right? Now I am not an ML engineer, so I'm not the best source of information here, and that's one thing I'd actually really like to say, like you need to pay attention from whom you are getting your information, right? Like that's incredibly important because there's a lot of people who yap about AI, they don't even know what it is, really. And even people within tech, I mean, I'm a back-end engineer, I don't really have that much to do with the state of AI right now, like to be honest, okay? I just recently started using ChatGPT to begin with. So, but I do have a lot of friends actually who ended up in the ML/AI space, right? And so I like to pick their brain a little bit. And overall, what I've been hearing from them, and let me know if you're an ML engineer what your take is on this, but a lot of them are saying that mid-level to senior, they're not going to have to worry because AI is just not at the point where it's able to replicate an actual human brain. But junior engineers, that's where it gets a little tricky, right? Because junior engineers often do a lot of grunt work. They do a lot of this stuff that automation actually can do, right? It kind of depends on the company and what not, but there's probably, and we might already be seeing this, I'd love some data on this, but we're probably going to be seeing how companies are going to try to get away with only opening positions for mid-level and senior, right? Because the thought is going to be, well, the work that the juniors did, a mid-level can do that with AI now. And actually, I mean, this is just anecdotal, so not very scientific of me, but I will say I'm looking at all the positions and most of the positions that I'm seeing are not really like junior level or new grad. And I think actually the worst scenario might be those people who only have like a year of experience because they're not new grads, so they don't get into those positions, but they also don't have enough experience to actually be like mid-level. Like mid-level usually I feel like is three to five years, right? Like I think on Amazon for example, you need at least three plus years or something like that to get into those, what is it, SDE 2 or something. Anyway. So I think I am actually seeing that online, but that's just anecdotal. Now, the thing with that of course is that it's going to blow up in our faces, obviously, because who's going to be a mid-level engineer then later on? You know what I mean? Like we do actually need new people in the field and those are the juniors. But if you've been in corporate America long enough, you know that these people are not really good at like long-term investment concepts. Not really their strength. So, yeah, they'll probably just make really bad decisions, make a shit ton of money and then hop off and then whatever. So I don't know. I don't know how that's exactly going to go. I don't think it's going to go well, though. The other thing though that I think is going to be more problematic for everybody involved is offshoring. And offshoring, I think there's kind of this idea, I think it's starting to fade though, but there have been some engineers that I've been seeing on online spaces who have been feeling very confident about, you know, the capabilities of American engineers versus everybody else. And let me just tell you guys, there's nothing like inherently like dazzling about the American mind, okay? If corporations, and they're doing this, there's, you know, invest in other areas in the world that are currently cheaper, right? They will very much get some good talent there. You just need to invest in the education. There's no other difference, right? So we're seeing, you know, big offices being built in Mexico City, Poland, the Philippines, I believe they're starting now if they haven't for a while, and that's just one that I've heard more recently. India of course is a very long, you know, we know about the Indian offices, right? I've worked with them, right? And so I can tell you first-hand experience, there are plenty of engineers over there that are very much capable and very good and can get the work done. And even if they were not as good, the issue too is that, you know, you might be able to get three or two to three engineers for the same price as an American engineer. You know what I mean? So it doesn't even really map, like the workload will be done, you know what I mean? So offshoring is a problem, I think, for the American engineer more than anything, in my opinion. And again, you can feel free to disagree with me on that and let me know if you do. But, I think the only way to mitigate that, right, would be a government intervention, actually. Because with unfettered capitalism, of course, they're just going to follow the money, they're going to follow the profit, they're going to want the cheapest labor of all time, okay, so that they can make the biggest bucks out of it, right? Very simple math. And so of course you're not going to go with like some bougie American engineer that lives in like San Francisco or New York City, God forbid. You know what I mean, who needs to make like 200k just to have a decent life, given what we do to, like we deserve it frankly, hello. No, you're going to go to Lord knows where. You know what I mean? So that's the thing, this is the problem with capitalism, actually, fun fact. So what you need is government intervention, like I said, and really it's the typical like carrot or stick, whatever, you know, tax cuts to incentivize or tax the shit out of them to make it less attractive, you know what I mean, something like that. The problem is with lobbying and all of this, I think we all know, like at the end of the day, who really owns America? I don't even need to say it, frankly. So it's a little bit of an issue right now. Oh, there's so much I could say about that, but I will not. But yeah, we do need people in our government who do prioritize the people of America, not so much the corporations of America, because it is in fact not the same thing. I know. But yeah. And just, you know, a last, but certainly not least, the other thing, the ugly truth perhaps, and this is not a fun thing to end this with, but the thing is unfortunately too that historically we've seen that certain industries do have a life cycle to them, right? And we have seen how jobs have risen and fallen, right? And so the career of a software engineer may not be something that we will have forever, right? Um, we've had the career of a typewriter or typist, whatever they were called. See, I don't even know the names of them, but that was a very established job. A lot of women did that job actually, by the way. Um, and of course, it's obsolete now, right? Or even just factory workers, right? We still see the effects to this day, plenty of parts of America, right, have lost so much income, so much wealth, right, because the factories were moved outside of the US, right? The whole made in China thing, the whole made in Mexico thing, right, that used to be made in America, we don't have that anymore. And then of course there are politicians saying, oh, we'll bring it back. Girl, that doesn't, no, no, it's not going to happen, bro. So, what do we do? You know what I mean? Like, should there have been incentives to never move the factories out of America, or is that just unrealistic? Because if we look at it, you know, we continue progressing and with those things, at some point, you know, we're probably going to fall off the cliff. But, progress doesn't allow for that, right, for these stops, right, these obstacles. So, it might be that, unfortunately, there's just really not all too much that we can do. We can soften the blow by having government intervention, certainly, but at some point with more and more automation, right, and the fact that yes, you very much can have a team of people working for you for an American corporation across the globe, um, at some point you're going to have to look at the writing on the wall. So, yeah, what does this mean for engineers, honestly? I think it truly just means that you have to stay on top of your game and you have to realize that this might not be a forever thing and to not invest into just one field, especially depending on how old you are and how long you expect to work, right? So, if you feel like you're going to retire in a few years, you are probably okay, right? If you are still in school right now, you might want to head, you want to make some bets on what you think is actually going to get you a decent income within the next like 20 years. And that's of course very hard to do. Nobody can predict the future, but at the end of the day, I think being adaptable, I mean, is literally survival of the fittest. It's survival of like the most adaptable, actually, is what that means. So, same shit. Anyway, let me know what you all think.
