Re:Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and ...
by crimsonalucard on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @05:17PM
(#16371354)
This isn't true at all. The state of the situation is tons of people are trying to switch over to web dev and given enough time and effort anyone can become competent at building large systems and solving hard problems. That huge gulf is huge but the gulf is shrinking at an incredible velocity.
The supply of human software developers is increasing at an incredible rate. You don't need a degree in software to do software. I would say roughly 40% of software devs now have an actual software engineering degree. Heck, I'm working with a guy who has a degree accounting and went to a freaking bootcamp for six months. He got lucky and was able to pass the hiring managers' little software puzzle (DFS problem) and he's now a full-time developer.
If anything threatens software engineers, it's probably the rise of automation capable of making the "basic web app" people obsolete. I snigger at myself when I contemplate some kind of AI which could do this, although the idea seems less crazy when viewed in the context of many companies and individuals who have attempted to create a "build anything fast" framework/service/ecosystem/etc. Perhaps it does take an AI.
Otherwise we're pretty safe, methinks. Carry on, no need to try for a career change, unless you're really sick of the job itself, in which case the world is your oyster.