Productivity at work is well correlated with enjoyment of work, so the industry better look for people who enjoy programming.

The realization that productive workers aren't just replaceable cogs in the machine is also a bitter lesson for businessmen.

I think the lifelong dream of many businesspeople is to create the perfect "cog in the machine" or ideally run a business without workers at all. (Tony Stark, Elon Musk's role model, is a good example of that. As far as the movies are concerned, he builds all his most important inventions himself, or with the help of AI, no workers involved)

Independent of what AI can do today, I suspect this was a reason why so many resources were poured into its development in the first place. Because this was the ultimate vision behind it.

You say it like it's a bad thing.

I do believe it's a bad thing, for a number of general reasons. But as far as the US specifically is concerned, I think a society can pick one out of the following two:

(1) Define people's worth through labour.

(2) See labour as a cost center that should be eliminated wherever possible.

US politicians and technologists are trying to have it both ways: Oppose a social safety net out of principle as to "not encourage leechers", forcing people to work, but at the same time seek to reduce the opportunities for work as much as possible. AI is the latest and potentially most far-reaching implementation of that.

This is asking for trouble.

The US spends more per capita on their social safety net than eg France does.

Of course, humans are social beings if technology 'allows' you to be antisocial, are you still being human?

Providing value for your fellow humans (= customers) while economising on scarce resources like human labour is anti-social?

>so the industry better look for people who enjoy programming

Why? Both AI and outsourcing provide a much cheaper way to get programming done. Why would you pay someone 100k because he likes doing what an AI or an Indian dev Team can do for much cheaper?

The Indian dev enjoys programming, too

And? It is a skill for the lowest end of software development. You can not pay someone 100k a year to just write software.

> generating value for customers through code.

Generating value for the shareholders and/or investors, not the customers. I suspect this is the next bitter lesson for developers.

Investors don’t make money if the customers don’t

I find it odd that this was ever forgotten.

People like to see everything as self expression. In reality, a job is a job, and you're there to make money for someone else.

Writing software will never again be a skill worth 100k a year.

I am sure Software developers are here to stay, but nobody who just writes software is worth anywhere close to 100k a year. Either AI or outsourcing is making sure of that.

Right now there are thousands of solo devs making >100k a year without a boss to annoy them. That's only going to grow with AI.

>That's only going to grow with AI.

And the amount of code these people write is only going to decrease.

Yes but the size and complexity of their software will increase proportionally.

And? It has done so for decades already.

So? What is your point?

"Writing software will never again be a skill worth 100k a year."

First sentence of my OP. I thought it was obvious.

Which is not true, writing software will continue to be a skill worth millions, even billions. But yeah, as we will soon have hundreds of millions of programmers, on avg 100k will be a thing of the past :)