> "The prediction was that software engineers would lose their jobs first, and the recent trend went the other way: demand for software engineers is higher than ever"
Hard to take anything the author says seriously making nonsensical claims like this. The software engineering job market has been getting worse every year since 2022 by virtually every metric. This is especially true at the entry and mid level. For example, computer engineering and computer science majors now have the #2 and #4 highest unemployment rates amongst recent graduates [1]
Students are smart to be cautious about the future, and it's annoying that adults with no skin in the game so flippantly dismiss these concerns without any data to back it up.
The market rebound appears to be mostly in senior roles [1] while everyone else are falling out of favor including new grads. Definitely puts the "higher than ever" claim in question. Indeed is looking at job postings data and I personally think this is a poor unit of measure. In my humble opinion the market isn't anywhere near where it used to be even several years prior to the pandemic.
Even before AI we were trending toward an economy with very few entry level jobs anywhere. AI is supercharging this, and I can easily now imagine a future where there's basically zero (good) jobs for anyone who isn't an expert.
So how do we get the next generation of senior professionals then?
This, I think, is a civilization-scale problem we will need to confront in the next 20-ish years.
Education needs to adapt. Currently CS graduates barely compete with Gemma-4 26b in programming while seniors are feeding tons of expertise at armies of frontier AI agents. The market now needs junior employees good at "using AI like an expert". Once employers see that junior armed with AI can replace senior at half the salary, we're back where we were 10 years ago.
Senior (now):
- AI build me an app that uses a graph DB that will deploy in the edge. Batch DB requests to keep costs low. Oh, use good cache + memoization to reduce hits. Write great tests, some logging and implement hot-reloading for a great dev-to-ops workflow that is also resilient. Man, before I had to do this all by hand, this is a godsend!
Junior (now):
- AI build app please.
Email from boss: Junior! Whatever it is you've deployed, it's making 1M reqs/min to the DB and ate up our quota 2h ago. Shut it down now!
Junior (future):
- AI1 design for cost. AI2 eval for performance. AI3 align for business goals. AI4 criticize AI1 and AI2 using top standards. AI5 set up a competing swarm. AI6 here's a budget, spend on real users and action on telemetry and their feedback.
> Junior (future): - AI1 design for cost. AI2 eval for performance. AI3 align for business goals. AI4 criticize AI1 and AI2 using top standards. AI5 set up a competing swarm. AI6 here's a budget, spend on real users and action on telemetry and their feedback.
Ugh, please no, why isn't these instructions in the system prompt of the harness if they are so valuable to the junior's work...?
JSavageOne · · focus · HN ↗
Hard to take anything the author says seriously making nonsensical claims like this. The software engineering job market has been getting worse every year since 2022 by virtually every metric. This is especially true at the entry and mid level. For example, computer engineering and computer science majors now have the #2 and #4 highest unemployment rates amongst recent graduates [1]
Students are smart to be cautious about the future, and it's annoying that adults with no skin in the game so flippantly dismiss these concerns without any data to back it up.
[1] <a href="https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market?utm_source=chatgpt.com#--:explore:outcomes-by-major" rel="nofollow">https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market?utm...
sakopov · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://hiringlab.indeed.com/2026/07/08/ai-and-job-postings-from-destruction-to-creation/" rel="nofollow">https://hiringlab.indeed.com/2026/07/08/ai-and-job-postings-...
api · · focus · HN ↗
So how do we get the next generation of senior professionals then?
This, I think, is a civilization-scale problem we will need to confront in the next 20-ish years.
ojosilva · · focus · HN ↗
Senior (now): - AI build me an app that uses a graph DB that will deploy in the edge. Batch DB requests to keep costs low. Oh, use good cache + memoization to reduce hits. Write great tests, some logging and implement hot-reloading for a great dev-to-ops workflow that is also resilient. Man, before I had to do this all by hand, this is a godsend!
Junior (now): - AI build app please.
Email from boss: Junior! Whatever it is you've deployed, it's making 1M reqs/min to the DB and ate up our quota 2h ago. Shut it down now!
Junior (future): - AI1 design for cost. AI2 eval for performance. AI3 align for business goals. AI4 criticize AI1 and AI2 using top standards. AI5 set up a competing swarm. AI6 here's a budget, spend on real users and action on telemetry and their feedback.
dansquizsoft · · focus · HN ↗
Ugh, please no, why isn't these instructions in the system prompt of the harness if they are so valuable to the junior's work...?