Developers' future is better than it looks like

I'm coming from a background as a senior developer, designer, and product owner. And as someone who wore multiple hats in different turbulent times, I'd like to take an optimistic bite at the topic of how badly doomed we are on the grand scheme of things.

Let's step back

As a society, we used to have people hand-drawing every letter and carving them into woodblocks, using punch cards to write programs, and manually uploading files to servers via FTP, and considered it a top-notch release process.

What's great is that we still need all those people! Process, tools and complexity have changed, but humans who care about what they do are still around.

So, chances are high, dear professional, that the world still needs you — yet perhaps for a different reason than one might think.

What are we doing

Our main strength was never actually the generation of artifacts. As software developers, we bring value by ensuring that business goals are achieved in an optimal, secure, predictable and accountable way. And the way we do it keeps changing all the time.

Let's put quality aside for a sec. Product Managers, Business Owners or Clients can do your job themselves for quite a while now. Long before agents, we had no-code platforms, website builders (I even built a few), Shopify, WordPress, and the "copy-paste-batteries-included" HTML templates of the 90s and early 2000s.

The real question isn't if your management can do it, but whether it makes sense for them to spend their time on execution, validation and iteration, while the world is on fire and client demand for quality keeps rising, and someone needs to steer the company to success.

Software engineers work across departments and verticals, ensure requirements and standards are met, and help prevent the company from piling up an Everest-sized tech-debt backlog. The code itself is just something people tend to associate us with. But maybe we need better marketing.

The tomorrow

While we can only imagine and speculate on what's coming and what's not, I have some observations that might make doomsday pressure a little more chill for you.

We are still in a growing bubble, and as the "Klarna effect" shows, companies keep adapting and are not yet sure what they are doing. Despite thousands of jobs being lost, currently, there is a 3:1 deficit in new-tech-skilled jobs. Some roles are fading and transforming. While new ones are emerging faster than we can fill them.

As a species, we are historically bad at predictions. Please remember, the web should be dead and replaced by native mobile apps by now, blockchain should have replaced every database ever, and we should all be paying for groceries in bitcoin.

Meanwhile

Grow new skills and start thinking in processes, systems, security and automations. I believe it has never been easier for an engineer to adopt a new tech and bridge the gap between idea and implementation.

Whether we asked for it or not, yet another gold rush is here, and the least we can do is to make sure our tools are sharp.

P.s. If your company is hiring junior developers (which is awesome), please-please share the strategy and the reasoning behind this decision