Imagine you have one full year, no obligations. You study every waking minute. What profession can you do reasonably well after that - and get paid the most?
There is no question about it - a software engineer. In the last 10-15 years, it has become the new lawyer/Wall Street trader:
It was the best job on the market. Every semi-analytical person took their shot.
As software started to eat the world, the demand continued to increase. Engineers were the first hires in every startup, and it was common to need hundreds of them if you wanted to truly scale up. So companies hired whoever could get through the loop.
But if we are honest, our job just isn’t that hard. Every doctor you’ve met could probably become a software engineer. Same for most lawyers. But how many devs could survive med school?
Most of us studied for 3–4 years, where only around 20% was actually related to programming. So we caught up a bit on YouTube, and most of what we actually know, we learned on our first job.
The result of all of it, was a fat middle layer of mediocre engineers, who are now getting squeezed:
The media loves the drama - stories like “a software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI, got rejected from 800 jobs, and now DoorDashes and lives in a trailer.”
Still, it’s not just clickbait - things really are tough. Everyone feels that the current times are the toughest in years. wrote a great piece about it.
I believe we had it coming.
Engineers got used to those cushy jobs, and became the most spoiled profession out there. We work from a nice office (or your home), solve interesting problems, and get paid in the top 10% of our country to do it.
And yet many engineers complain:
“Don’t talk to me after working hours”
“I don’t want to work on legacy code”
“The requirements aren’t clear enough, I can’t work like this”
Do an experiment. Try to suggest to a fresh graduate who can’t find a job on LinkedIn or Reddit to work for minimal pay to get some experience. You’ll get roasted.
In other careers, it’s super common! You grind during the first years, with minimal pay. You ‘earn’ your way up, you don’t start with $100K and an easy job.
I’m a bit annoyed with all this whining on LinkedIn.
Great software engineers are not afraid that AI will take their jobs - because they know it just can’t. There is so much more to our jobs than just writing code.
The Squeeze goes both directions
It’s not just one of the hardest times, it’s also one of the most exciting.
I’m hugely optimistic about the software engineering career. All those companies started by vibe-coders all around you? Many will succeed, and will need great engineers to scale up.
Some engineers understand this, and use the chance to skill up. To succeed, you’ll probably need all the skills of an engineer, some of a PM,and even a bit of design taste. It’s not just about shipping code anymore.
But if you work as a code monkey, getting detailed tickets and just shipping them, you’ve done this to yourself. You won’t be needed pretty soon.
I believe there are too many mediocre engineers, but also not enough great ones.
If you really want to be a software engineer, and you’re out of a job - are you actually trying hard enough? What are you doing, aside from sending CVs and doing interviews?
It’s never been easier to ship new ideas.Are you playing with the latest AI tools?Are you solving real problems around you?
Or are you waiting for someone to hand you a backlog again?
It’s not shameful to switch.Software engineering used to be for everyone.Now I believe it’s for the ones who really want it.
Final words
I don’t think this post will be very popular, but I felt the need to share my honest thoughts. I’m NOT saying there are no great engineers without a job, or that people deserved to be laid off.
My point is that there is just no place for ‘coasting’ in software engineering anymore, but there is (and will be) a lot of place for ambitious engineers, even fresh graduates.
So hopefully you got the right message from it :)
What I enjoyed reading this week
Stop Juggling AI Tools - How to Build a Second Brain That Actually Works for You by . Jenny’s newsletter is a great source for engineers who want to play with AI tools a bit. She’s also an amazing example of what I’m talking about - switched from a PhD in Chemistry, have been a software engineer for a couple of years, and constantly curious about how can she actually use the latest tools.
The internet killed general-purpose products. AI will bring them back by .
