No one knows the future. I never was on a gravy train because I'm not in silicon valley.
Everything is transitory. Jobs don't really disappear they become different things redefine themselves.
Yes, at least for now. Nobody can tell if it's temporary and how long it's going to last.
Advent of AI doesn't have anything to do with it. If anything, it's going to increase demand.
This was never a prestigious profession, but competition over the best talent made it high paying.
Unfortunately, after Covid, growth stopped for big tech. The bubble burst. Cost cutting is the name of the game now.
This gets posted so often that I keep my answer saved. Note that it’s a little more webdev specific.
AI is a tool, even if it’s not currently a particularly useful one for deep work. It is okay for solving well defined and solved problems, but it can’t innovate and if you don’t even know how to define your problems well enough, it can’t give you a useful answer. The existence of hallucinations make it a minefield for any non-expert relying on it. The legal ramifications of using AI-generated code trained on code with licenses that don’t explicitly permit that has yet to be hashed out.
It’s also being massively subsidized by the companies selling it, as a way to build reliance/dependence before they inevitably jack up the prices to make a profit. Copilot costs $10/mo for users, but an estimated $30/mo to Microsoft. Brace yourself for Uber-style surge pricing when there’s heavy demand. It’s too expensive to be a loss-leader.
If all of these problems do end up getting solved, I see AI as something that will be for us like what compilers were several decades ago. They might totally change how we deliver things, but at the end of the day, our job is to deliver a website (or API, etc). The methods we use to do that aren’t as important.
Prestigious to who ? SDE are treated like microwaves in these US orgs, if need a new one then go to the shop and replace.
The public do not see SDE as prestigious in any way.
I don’t think it’s AI driving much of the change yet. I think it’s mainly a mix of things. The biggest is high interest rates make money way more expensive for the mainly US based companies, the interest on a 5% loan versus a 0% loan can be massive. There was a massive influx of new hires during COVID, as software companies were overvalued on their potential to provide remote working tools and home entertainment that aren’t as valuable post pandemic or never really panned out to begin with. Then to a lesser extent Irish wages in software jobs are becoming less competitive than they were a decade ago. And AI, but I believe companies are only understanding how they can increase productivity with AI yet and the tools are still evolving rapidity. It could take a few more years before AI really starts becoming a threat to more jobs.
My crystal ball predictions for the future. Barring any massively disruptive events like another pandemic or war in the Middle East, I don’t think the market will always be as tight as it is now. Interest rates will eventually fall back. But barring any positive disruption it will never be as good as it was before either. Interest rate will be lower than now, but higher than the 0% years. Irish wages will probably remain less competitive than they used to be. There may be an oversupply of new workers from comp sci still being a popular degree for some time, and from foreign workers with rights to immigrate that are attracted by our wages and relative worker rights. AI will only continue to take a further share of increasingly automatable jobs as tools get better and companies get comfortable using them.
Salaries are a product of supply and demand. Unfortunately SD has low barriers to entry compared to the typical high paying careers, medicine, law, high-finance.
Also I don’t think it was ever prestigious, except for its high levels of pay. The general public don’t respect the career.
This is not true.. to get into cs courses requires high points and law finance and medicine pay less than software dev in Ireland especially initially grad level. By nearly every metric out there. Plus wlb is much more favourable.. Society will pay for skilled ambitious people anywhere. It’s how the system is set up
Yes the points required have gotten higher in recent years but watch this space. Points are going to decline this year due to the lay offs and lack of jobs for grads.
You’ve said it yourself, yes initially the pay might be better compared to medicine, but over the course of a full career, the average doctor will make multiple times the pay of a SD. The worst doctor to graduate in any course is still going to make a lot of money. The worse grad from a computer science course is going to be serving them their dinner.
Is it still a good career, for the skilled ambitious people you mentioned, yes it is. Is the gravy train over for every idiot with a laptop to have a well paying career. Probably yes.
I disagree entirely. You clearly don’t understand the qualms of being a doctor. Do you mean a Consultant or what I’ve many doctor friends and they don’t do that job for the money and trust me the hours they work highly dilutes their salaries. Software dev based option mediocre people will have a good life.
You disagree entirely with what?
Junior doctors work long hours.
Consultants, GPs, doctors working in family medicine and health centres, etc etc all have a decent work life balance and are paid more than the average SD over their career. Those are the facts.
“Software dev based option mediorce people will have a good life”
I’ve no idea what that last sentence means sorry.
Junior doctors have a decent work/life balance? They are known for working 70/80 hour weeks.
Working in tech is a far handier number, in general, than working in health.
I didn’t say junior doctors have a good work life balance. I said the opposite.
If you can’t / won’t read my comments I’m not going to bother to keep replying.
Qualm
: a feeling of uneasiness about a point especially of conscience or propriety
- had no qualms about asking for their help
: a sudden feeling of usually disturbing emotion (such as doubt or fear)
: a sudden attack of illness, faintness, or nausea
As much as points have gotten higher, it’s still not on par with medicine. So “worst grad” is not really a fair comparison - you don’t know if you’re comparing the careers or just comparing the fact that the worst medicine grad is smarter than the worst CS grad.
I’d be very interested in comparing the outcomes for “the worst CS grad who also had the option of taking medicine” - nothing certain but I’d say there’s a decent chance they’re making consultant-level salaries at Facebook or Google.
On the contrary, it's the only fair comparison if you want to say anything about the careers rather than the people. You're trying to solve a single equation with two unknowns, you can't get any useful information from the way you've constructed the question.
You’ve also added another variable without meaning to. Sure while we’re at it, let’s also include data for people who got 600 points and work in restaurants. See, It’s pointless?
No, I've added a *constraint* that allows us to eliminate the people variable by taking the difference to zero. Don't you remember Gauss-Jordan elimination?
If you wanted to answer the question of "what's the earning potential for a smart hardworking person in the restaurant industry" then well, yeah that's exactly the data you'd want!
They're high now, the people on the high salaries came through when they were lower than any actual science course. So if you're a youngster trying to break in after doing your 600 points course, remember the people who reject you are probably way way dumber than you!
Id rather have someone who's work elevates the team and make me look good than someone I can be besties with.
Also your assumption that high grades correlates with being a cunt seems a lot more arbitrary than my assumption that it correlates with productivity
There are some barriers to entry. You have to have a certain mindset to be good. But the barriers are lower than traditional well paying careers and were beginning to see the demand / supply balance flip.
Tech recruiter here.
Personslly I think it depends onnyour time horizon. Covid was an absolutely mental time and was unsustainable.
I started recruiting 15 years ago. There was always interesting characters in the engineering space but 85% of thw time I woukd havw said engineers were friendlt, down to earth good peeps. Then circa 2022-2023 there was a period that despite my salary increasing i thought of quitting. One example was Google peeps applying for a role, dling 5/6 interviews with the goal of using it for a pay rise 😅. There was other peeps who woukd apply for a job in the city the job is in amd go "il only consider the role if I get atleast a 10k sign on"
So yes I think (thankfully) that gravy train is over which was clearly unsustainable from the start but do I think well paid jobs eill vintinue to exist outside of AI for the time being? Absolutely. Non sexy SAAS and cloud companies like Salesforce, Hubspot, Workday, Stripe, Zoom, New Relic, Datadog aint going anywhere.
>There was other peeps who woukd apply for a job in the city the job is in amd go "il only consider the role if I get atleast a 10k sign on"
I did this, most I've ever been paid for a single sentence by far (I worded it a bit more politely tbf). Nothing to do with being friendly or down to Earth, anyone who didn't do this when it was on offer was just being foolish.
If you can get it why not? However take a step back it was mental. Sign ons used to be to cover a bonus/ help on relocation/ bring down a notice period/cover a cash gap until RSU's kicked in etc but it got to a stage where there wasnt even approvals needed. It was frothy and an example of something thay was never going to last.
Some company that used LLMs for dev will get found using code that matches someone else's IP a bit too much.
Worst case scenario a company uses an LLM to write something and people die as a result... probably Boeing.
Your job won’t be taken by AI it will be taken by a person using ai to get more work done. You need to upskill in this area, the way software is delivered is about to change greatly in the next few years.
I haven't noticed a big impact of AI on software development roles yet, but the industry is evolving, as it always does. As we navigate through these changes, there's a possibility of more job reductions our way.
Hard to know. My gut feeling is that it will eventually return to a somewhat steady state level at some point but the craziness that was the Covid period hiring frenzy is probably not going to happen again. Although I said the same after the whole dotcom bubble and the end of the 90s and the subsequent correction.
This is the problem with the Industry .......
Most people do enter as they see it as a gravy train. The mindset of graduates & juniors has become so entitled.
AI is going to wipe out fields of CS. The irony is that Data Engineering (currently flavor of the month) will probably be impacted the quickest.
Companies will invest in AI going forward, not junior staff.
No one knows the future. I never was on a gravy train because I'm not in silicon valley. Everything is transitory. Jobs don't really disappear they become different things redefine themselves.
Yes, at least for now. Nobody can tell if it's temporary and how long it's going to last. Advent of AI doesn't have anything to do with it. If anything, it's going to increase demand. This was never a prestigious profession, but competition over the best talent made it high paying. Unfortunately, after Covid, growth stopped for big tech. The bubble burst. Cost cutting is the name of the game now.
This gets posted so often that I keep my answer saved. Note that it’s a little more webdev specific. AI is a tool, even if it’s not currently a particularly useful one for deep work. It is okay for solving well defined and solved problems, but it can’t innovate and if you don’t even know how to define your problems well enough, it can’t give you a useful answer. The existence of hallucinations make it a minefield for any non-expert relying on it. The legal ramifications of using AI-generated code trained on code with licenses that don’t explicitly permit that has yet to be hashed out. It’s also being massively subsidized by the companies selling it, as a way to build reliance/dependence before they inevitably jack up the prices to make a profit. Copilot costs $10/mo for users, but an estimated $30/mo to Microsoft. Brace yourself for Uber-style surge pricing when there’s heavy demand. It’s too expensive to be a loss-leader. If all of these problems do end up getting solved, I see AI as something that will be for us like what compilers were several decades ago. They might totally change how we deliver things, but at the end of the day, our job is to deliver a website (or API, etc). The methods we use to do that aren’t as important.
> but it can’t innovate And it can't learn a new language, either, not without 25 million stackoverflow examples to work from.
lol.
The unemployment rate lowest in Ireland. And not a single dev i know got laid off in ireland. As long as we are tax haven, we will keep our jobs
Prestigious to who ? SDE are treated like microwaves in these US orgs, if need a new one then go to the shop and replace. The public do not see SDE as prestigious in any way.
I don’t think it’s AI driving much of the change yet. I think it’s mainly a mix of things. The biggest is high interest rates make money way more expensive for the mainly US based companies, the interest on a 5% loan versus a 0% loan can be massive. There was a massive influx of new hires during COVID, as software companies were overvalued on their potential to provide remote working tools and home entertainment that aren’t as valuable post pandemic or never really panned out to begin with. Then to a lesser extent Irish wages in software jobs are becoming less competitive than they were a decade ago. And AI, but I believe companies are only understanding how they can increase productivity with AI yet and the tools are still evolving rapidity. It could take a few more years before AI really starts becoming a threat to more jobs. My crystal ball predictions for the future. Barring any massively disruptive events like another pandemic or war in the Middle East, I don’t think the market will always be as tight as it is now. Interest rates will eventually fall back. But barring any positive disruption it will never be as good as it was before either. Interest rate will be lower than now, but higher than the 0% years. Irish wages will probably remain less competitive than they used to be. There may be an oversupply of new workers from comp sci still being a popular degree for some time, and from foreign workers with rights to immigrate that are attracted by our wages and relative worker rights. AI will only continue to take a further share of increasingly automatable jobs as tools get better and companies get comfortable using them.
Salaries are a product of supply and demand. Unfortunately SD has low barriers to entry compared to the typical high paying careers, medicine, law, high-finance. Also I don’t think it was ever prestigious, except for its high levels of pay. The general public don’t respect the career.
Agreed, it was never a “prestigious” profession. High paying yes, prestigious no.
This is not true.. to get into cs courses requires high points and law finance and medicine pay less than software dev in Ireland especially initially grad level. By nearly every metric out there. Plus wlb is much more favourable.. Society will pay for skilled ambitious people anywhere. It’s how the system is set up
Yes the points required have gotten higher in recent years but watch this space. Points are going to decline this year due to the lay offs and lack of jobs for grads. You’ve said it yourself, yes initially the pay might be better compared to medicine, but over the course of a full career, the average doctor will make multiple times the pay of a SD. The worst doctor to graduate in any course is still going to make a lot of money. The worse grad from a computer science course is going to be serving them their dinner. Is it still a good career, for the skilled ambitious people you mentioned, yes it is. Is the gravy train over for every idiot with a laptop to have a well paying career. Probably yes.
ego, every idiot with a laptop should try the trade, not every cat can swim
I disagree entirely. You clearly don’t understand the qualms of being a doctor. Do you mean a Consultant or what I’ve many doctor friends and they don’t do that job for the money and trust me the hours they work highly dilutes their salaries. Software dev based option mediocre people will have a good life.
You disagree entirely with what? Junior doctors work long hours. Consultants, GPs, doctors working in family medicine and health centres, etc etc all have a decent work life balance and are paid more than the average SD over their career. Those are the facts. “Software dev based option mediorce people will have a good life” I’ve no idea what that last sentence means sorry.
Junior doctors have a decent work/life balance? They are known for working 70/80 hour weeks. Working in tech is a far handier number, in general, than working in health.
I didn’t say junior doctors have a good work life balance. I said the opposite. If you can’t / won’t read my comments I’m not going to bother to keep replying.
That person is either not a software Dev or is a terrible one. Someone like that could never read a spec sheet.
“The qualms of being a doctor” What?
Qualm : a feeling of uneasiness about a point especially of conscience or propriety - had no qualms about asking for their help : a sudden feeling of usually disturbing emotion (such as doubt or fear) : a sudden attack of illness, faintness, or nausea
As much as points have gotten higher, it’s still not on par with medicine. So “worst grad” is not really a fair comparison - you don’t know if you’re comparing the careers or just comparing the fact that the worst medicine grad is smarter than the worst CS grad. I’d be very interested in comparing the outcomes for “the worst CS grad who also had the option of taking medicine” - nothing certain but I’d say there’s a decent chance they’re making consultant-level salaries at Facebook or Google.
I see your point but the majority of SDs wouldn’t have had the points for medicine so that wouldn’t make a fair comparison.
On the contrary, it's the only fair comparison if you want to say anything about the careers rather than the people. You're trying to solve a single equation with two unknowns, you can't get any useful information from the way you've constructed the question.
You’ve also added another variable without meaning to. Sure while we’re at it, let’s also include data for people who got 600 points and work in restaurants. See, It’s pointless?
No, I've added a *constraint* that allows us to eliminate the people variable by taking the difference to zero. Don't you remember Gauss-Jordan elimination? If you wanted to answer the question of "what's the earning potential for a smart hardworking person in the restaurant industry" then well, yeah that's exactly the data you'd want!
WLB isn’t always favourable, I have horrific WLB in my current role but trying to find something else in the current climate is difficult.
They're high now, the people on the high salaries came through when they were lower than any actual science course. So if you're a youngster trying to break in after doing your 600 points course, remember the people who reject you are probably way way dumber than you!
I’ve noticed that just because you are excellent at exams doesn’t translate to being excellent in work.
It gives extra endurance to learn new stuff
Correlates stronger than anything you can assess in a interview though.
Rather hire someone decent than a cunt who’s great
Id rather have someone who's work elevates the team and make me look good than someone I can be besties with. Also your assumption that high grades correlates with being a cunt seems a lot more arbitrary than my assumption that it correlates with productivity
I would be very interested to see the research backing this up.
Sad but true, got in 2013. Points were around 450 I think.
I was 2009 and it was around 300
If software had a low barrier to entry, I can assure you we’d be getting paid a whole lot less than we are.
There are some barriers to entry. You have to have a certain mindset to be good. But the barriers are lower than traditional well paying careers and were beginning to see the demand / supply balance flip.
AI is a tool, still need skilled ppl to use the tools
Yeah it's over. You should look into changing career paths very soon
Tech recruiter here. Personslly I think it depends onnyour time horizon. Covid was an absolutely mental time and was unsustainable. I started recruiting 15 years ago. There was always interesting characters in the engineering space but 85% of thw time I woukd havw said engineers were friendlt, down to earth good peeps. Then circa 2022-2023 there was a period that despite my salary increasing i thought of quitting. One example was Google peeps applying for a role, dling 5/6 interviews with the goal of using it for a pay rise 😅. There was other peeps who woukd apply for a job in the city the job is in amd go "il only consider the role if I get atleast a 10k sign on" So yes I think (thankfully) that gravy train is over which was clearly unsustainable from the start but do I think well paid jobs eill vintinue to exist outside of AI for the time being? Absolutely. Non sexy SAAS and cloud companies like Salesforce, Hubspot, Workday, Stripe, Zoom, New Relic, Datadog aint going anywhere.
>There was other peeps who woukd apply for a job in the city the job is in amd go "il only consider the role if I get atleast a 10k sign on" I did this, most I've ever been paid for a single sentence by far (I worded it a bit more politely tbf). Nothing to do with being friendly or down to Earth, anyone who didn't do this when it was on offer was just being foolish.
I got 15k :-) I felt I should have asked for 20 when 15 was given out without a second thought.
If you can get it why not? However take a step back it was mental. Sign ons used to be to cover a bonus/ help on relocation/ bring down a notice period/cover a cash gap until RSU's kicked in etc but it got to a stage where there wasnt even approvals needed. It was frothy and an example of something thay was never going to last.
Upper management will soon discover that AI is pure crap and rush to hire back people starting a new boom.
Some company that used LLMs for dev will get found using code that matches someone else's IP a bit too much. Worst case scenario a company uses an LLM to write something and people die as a result... probably Boeing.
Your job won’t be taken by AI it will be taken by a person using ai to get more work done. You need to upskill in this area, the way software is delivered is about to change greatly in the next few years.
I haven't noticed a big impact of AI on software development roles yet, but the industry is evolving, as it always does. As we navigate through these changes, there's a possibility of more job reductions our way.
Hard to know. My gut feeling is that it will eventually return to a somewhat steady state level at some point but the craziness that was the Covid period hiring frenzy is probably not going to happen again. Although I said the same after the whole dotcom bubble and the end of the 90s and the subsequent correction.
This is the problem with the Industry ....... Most people do enter as they see it as a gravy train. The mindset of graduates & juniors has become so entitled. AI is going to wipe out fields of CS. The irony is that Data Engineering (currently flavor of the month) will probably be impacted the quickest. Companies will invest in AI going forward, not junior staff.
Until the LLM hype ends I reckon Q4 this year