Comment by petcat
3 hours ago
"software engineer" is likely a career long gone. "Product engineer" and architect is probably the only software-adjacent title that will have consistent demand for awhile.
Basically still just a prompt jockey but knows the difference between outputs that are good and bad.
I was a huge AI skeptic from the beginning through ~2025. But once Opus came out, it's pretty obvious writing code by hand is an obsolete skill on its own. You still need to know how to read code, how to know what good/bad code looks like, and if it matches what you're truly asking for. But there's really no reason to be typing code with your own fingers in 2026 and beyond.
2024 me would be shocked at current me saying this.
>how to know what good/bad code looks like, and if it matches what you're truly asking for
And how you would know to do that, if you're not writing code?
Maybe you think there’s no reason for you to be writing code by hand anymore, but it doesn’t follow that the entire skill is obsolete.
Same. "Writing Code" is dead. Reading code, understanding code, and knowing how to manage products and services is still very much alive.
> writing code by hand is an obsolete skill on its own. You still need to know how to read code, how to know what good/bad code looks like,
It's my impression that the best way to be able to read code and distinguish good from bad is to write code. Get burned a few times and you know why certain patterns are a bad idea. You don't internalize that equally well from a powerpoint slide.
Compare this to math. Every successful mathematician has gone through the motions of proving certain basic theorems in math. Like Euclid's proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers. And then they went through related exercises. This was all learned with sweat. The statement above is akin to saying there is no point in doing any proofs by hand anymore, just read one and you will have sufficient understanding of mathematics and become a good mathematician. I don't think that's true. (And I also believe that many sw eng people would be better at their job had they groked the proof of the halting problem.)
Yep. If you think your job involves "writing code" as the core part of your responsibilities, write yourself off immediately. That career is dead and dusted. Sadly most companies still haven't realized this, given how few Architect openings exist (and those that do, most are asking for 20+ years of exp lol)
In my professional experience most people I encountered that held the architect title didnt really know anything about proper software engineering and just knew how to talk well and hold meetings with many different stakeholders - which tbf is not a trivial skill, but I can’t imagine everyone becoming architects and no one doing actual work they understand.
Definition of what the role actually means can change as well over time, in the same way that a civil engineer also isn’t physically doing the construction.
Most companies aren't gonna need an architect, but if you can tell and demonstrate a good story around quality/risk/stability they might be interested in that.
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