[timkam]

The narrative reflects a broader cultural shift, from "we are all in this together" (pandemic) to "our organizations are bloated and people don't work hard enough" (already pre-LLM hype post-pandemic). The observation that less-skilled people can, with the help of LLMs, take the work of traditionally more-skilled people fits this narrative. In the end, it is about demoting some types of knowledge workers from the skilled class to the working class. Apparently, important people believe that this is a long-term sustainable narrative.

[closewith]

The skilled class is the working class and always has been. The delusion that software developers were ever outside the working class because they were paid well is just that - an arrogant delusion.

[Spooky23]

Engineering is always boom/bust. Ask a retired aerospace engineer who got purged in the 90s.

Technology always automates jobs away. I had a dedicated database systems team 25 years ago that was larger than an infrastructure team managing 1000x more stuff today. Dev teams are bloated in most places, today.

[timkam]

Well, for the time SEs are substantially better paid than working-class jobs, they are not the working class. For now, this applies at least to some regions, not only within the US. I agree in that I have at times felt some level of arrogance among some people taking up software engineering jobs, but IMO this just confirms the social class aspect of it. So there may have been some level of delusion to it, but at least temporarily it was, and partially still is, true.

[aaronbaugher]

Yeah, I don't see any real difference between "Shut up and take it or we'll outsource your job overseas," which they've been saying since the 90s, and "Shut up and take it or we'll replace you with AI." Same threat, same motives.

[tehjoker]

s/post-pandemic/after ignoring the pandemic/

[umanwizard]

The pandemic is ongoing.

[Elinvynia]

For anyone downvoting this: look into how many people are currently infected. Compare that to early 2020.

Yes, the people who were prone to dying already did so years ago. But the rate of long term disability in every single country is skyrocketing.

The average person has had 4.7 covid infections by now. Now look into the literal thousands of studies of long term effects of that.

Future generations will never forgive us for throwing them under the bus.

[neom]

Why are you using the word "demoting"?