Repricing of Software Engineering Labor

11 hours ago

The author reflects on the software engineering industry's evolution from the late 2010s to the present, highlighting a shift driven by cheap money and the rise of LLMs.
In the late 2010s, startups with abundant funding prioritized hiring generalist software engineers to maximize feature throughput, favoring breadth over depth in skills.
LLMs have compressed implementation costs, making standardized tasks like CRUD apps and API integration less valuable and reducing demand for implementation-heavy roles.
The market is repricing software engineering, with a decline in value for generalists focused on implementation and a rise in demand for deep expertise in areas like correctness, latency, and operational complexity.
Expertise gained through experience in debugging distributed failures, running mission-critical systems, and making architectural trade-offs is becoming more valuable than mere coding skills.
While AI tools enable PMs and domain experts to build prototypes, production systems still require engineers with skills in reliability, scale, security, and performance.
The author concludes that the highest returns in software engineering now come from deep specialization in one hard area rather than broad, generalist knowledge.

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