Software abundance: a brain dump on the state of the job market and the software industry. My feelings have swung between optimism and pessimism over the past ~8 or so months, and have ultimately landed on the extreme end of optimism / positivity, I'll try to explain why. I've thought about this a lot. In November 2025 if you were a software engineer and tried Opus 4.5, you knew it was basically "over", or you were in denial that it was over. Over in the sense of our identities as programmers no longer was going to mean what it used to mean, typing code etc.. "does this mean less demand for what I do since more people can do it, will I be valued less, will the cost of software go to zero..." In terms of the software job market, a large portion of it is booming. Many companies are being born, exploding in value, revenue, and hiring. People who became AI pilled in their approach to software engineering have done extremely well, those who haven't have not. People who have pivoted into new and fast growing verticals, companies, products enabled by AI have done well, people who stuck with larger teams / companies that either are moving slowly or are being disrupted have had a hard time or are being laid off. People who still distinctly identify as a "frontend / backend / etc.." have had a harder time than people who have said fuck it and 10xed themselves by leaning harder into AI and objectively broadening their skillset + what they bring to the table. It's crazy that I can talk to someone with the former mindset and it's doom and gloom while people in the latter literally are making more than they ever have, along with more opportunities than they have ever had. My craziest realization though is more around the state of the software industry and software abundance. Since joining
- Your mentioning of the fact that AI is doing a lot of the work software engineers hate is extremely underrated. My brain is a lot less fried at the end of the day compared to a few years ago
- I slightly disagree. The ability to write code is eliminated as a barrier. Code monkeys who LARPed as engineers were basically nerfed. If you can tell the difference between software engineering and software coding, AI makes you a cracked out superhuman. That is where the
- Nobody said wish there was more software. There will soon be a saturation point. Just because more people becoming receptionists doesn’t mean world needs more receptionists. I think your optimism comes from your bias of working at cognition.