Mid level engineers will come from building something like GitHub, Netflix or Gmail over the weekend using powerful AI. The skills of current senior engineers will be much easier to gain since the feedback loop for software architecture and design will be down to hours instead of quarters.
Being able to architect massive software systems well, will be expected from a new graduates.
The role of junior software developers will not be needed, just as we don’t need people doing multiplication by hand.
This seems the likely end result. We'll always need SWEs, of course, but gone will be the days of entire dev teams working toward a common product.
I suspect SWE may trend toward other ailing fields like law with individual devs working on entire 'cases' and it being very competitive; rather than the recent "20min Js tutorial on YT to SF startup" industry.
Senior developer aren't senior because they can type code very fast. They are senior because they can take on responsibilities and make decisions. A junior that types code very fast is a junior that types code very fast.
The key here is what are you taking responsibilities and decisions for. Senior engineers take decisions which consequences will be apparent in a year or two. If productivity increases to the point where features that take months to deliver take days, the decisions made _currently_ by senior engineers can be taken by fresh graduates.
There’re still going to be senior roles, but their scope will be much bigger and expertise sought will be different than what senior engineers do currently. No one will hire a senior engineer just because they can architect and deliver a scalable SaaS product on a short timeline.
Engineers who learn and adapt
will be fine. Engineers who dropped learning the moment they graduated from college… not so much.
The role of junior software developers will not be needed, just as we don’t need people doing multiplication by hand.