Will AI do to Software Engineering what Offshoring did to Manufacturing?

AI is replacing work traditionally given to junior software engineers¹. The thesis^{2 3} is that repetitive, boilerplate work can now be automated, freeing senior engineers to apply the tacit skills of programming which AI is not yet able to automate.

But this tacit knowledge is developed through years of practice: the design and management of large codebases, managing complexity, knowing when to incur tech debt, when to pay it off, and so on.

So if there are no longer incentives to train junior software engineers, what will happen to the industry? We can make a prediction by observing how the same pattern unfolded in another industry: manufacturing.

US manufacturing employment peaked in 1979⁴, after which offshoring began to erode the labor force. Consequently, there was less demand for trainees, resulting in a “labor population pyramid” skewed toward older (senior) workers. Now, as those seniors retire, they take their tacit knowledge with them, and it becomes harder and harder to train new juniors⁵. Ultimately, offshoring caused a vicious cycle which led to a skills gap around 30 years later⁶.

Note that the opposite of this effect happens as well, to quote Pisano and Shih:

Once an industrial commons has taken root in a region, a powerful virtuous cycle feeds its growth. Experts flock there because that’s where the jobs and knowledge networks are. Firms do the same to tap the talent pool, stay abreast of advances, and be near suppliers and potential partners.

Now let’s translate this to software engineering to make a prediction. We have the same initial conditions, except instead of offshoring replacing juniors, it’s AI. If the same pattern unfolds, then in ~30 years time we’d expect to see much of the tacit knowledge of programming disappear from the workforce, and a similar skills gap.

Will this actually happen? This time there are some differences:

1. AI may progress enough to replace seniors too (exacerbating the problem?)
2. Software skills become outdated faster (we’ll be training more juniors anyway)
3. Software has a low barrier to entry for learning, and AI can help you learn
4. Junior work is not offshored (if the AI is US-based), so is the “industrial commons” really eroded?
5. The “industrial commons” of open source software is distributed and accessible from anywhere

I’d bet against the erosion of software engineering purely based on (3) and (5): it’s easy enough to train oneself without significant monetary investment, and the “industrial commons” of software exists at least partly in open source projects where new developers can learn from seniors by contributing their labor for free.

However, I would predict that new software engineers will have to front more of the cost of learning that could previously be done on the job, and that this will mean fewer people will select software engineering as a career for purely economic reasons over “love of the game”.

Time will tell!