Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code

This AI race is happening so fast. Seems like it to me anyway. As a software developer/engineer I am worried about my job prospects.. time will tell. I am wondering what will happen to the west coast housing bubbles once software engineers lose their high price tags. I guess the next wave of knowledge workers will move in and take their place?

It has the potential to effect a lot more than just SV/The West Coast - in fact SV may be one of the only areas who have some silver lining with AI development. I think these models have a chance to disrupt employment in the industry globally. Ironically it may be only SWE's and a few other industries (writing, graphic design, etc) that truly change. You can see they and other AI labs are targeting SWEs in particular - just look at the announcement "Claude 3.7 and Code" - very little mention of any other domains on their announcement posts.

For people who aren't in SV for whatever reason and haven't seen the really high pay associated with being there - SWE is just a standard job often stressful with lots of learning required ongoing. The pain/anxiety of being disrupted is even higher then since having high disposable income to invest/save would of been less likely. Software to them would of been a job with comparable pay's to other jobs in the area; often requiring you to be degree qualified as well - anecdotally many I know got into it for the love; not the money.

Who would of thought the first job being automated by AI would be software itself? Not labor, or self driving cars. Other industries either seem to have hit dead ends, or had other barriers (regulation, closed knowledge, etc) that make it harder to do. SWE's have set an example to other industries - don't let AI in or keep it in-house as long as possible. Be closed source in other words. Seems ironic in hindsight.

What do you even do then as a student? I've asked this dozens of times with zero practical answers at all. Frankly I've become entirely numb to it all.

I'm sure lots of potential students / bootcampers are now not going into programming (or if they are, the smart ones try to go into niches like A.I and skip web/backend/android altogether). This will work against the numbers of jobs being reduced by A.I. It will take a few years though to play out , but at some point we will see smaller amounts of people trying to get into the field and applying for jobs, certainly for junior positions. We've already had ~ 2 bad years, a couple more like this will really dry out the numbers of newcomers. Less people coming in (than otherwise would have) means for every person who retires / leaves the industry there are less people to take his place. This situation is quite complex with lots of parameters that work in different directions so it's very early to try to get some kind of read on where this is going.

As a new career I'd probably not choose SWE now. But if you've done 10 years already I'd ride it out, there is a good chance most of us will remain employed for many years to come.