Alexander Torrenegra

Hiring a software engineer will soon make as much sense as hiring a computer. Until the 1950s, "computer" was a job title: people (mostly women) doing calculations by hand in accounting departments, observatories, and NASA (Hidden Figures, anyone?). Then electronic computers showed up, did the job faster and cheaper, and stole the name. For more than five decades, nobody has hired a computer. We buy them. The same thing is happening to software engineers. Demand for traditional developers is dropping like a rock. What companies want now are people who ship with AI: technical enough to stop the agents from building monstrosities, product-minded enough to own the metrics, and leading multiple agents instead of writing code line by line. For most of my life, Edison's "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" was an axiom for me. In software, it's ~50/50 today. Within 3-4 years, it flips. When execution is free, your value is how good your ideas are. If you're an engineer, become a product person. Nobody posts job ads for computers.