I think the software industry is heading straight toward a massive labor shortage, and the irony is that we're creating it ourselves.

There’s a strange disconnect happening right now between what people believe AI is doing to software development and what’s actually happening in the industry. The prevailing narrative is that AI is going to dramatically reduce our need for software developers, and that as the tools become more capable, companies will need fewer engineers to get the same amount of work done.

I’ll be the first to say that AI is amazing and has super-charged what a single engineer can produce and the technology is only getting better. But there’s another side to this that I think we’re overlooking. From where I sit, we’re writing more software than ever before. AI is making entirely new projects economically viable. Ideas that would have been too expensive or time-consuming to pursue a few years ago are suddenly within reach. More problems are now solvable, and the opportunities just keep expanding. We’re not running out of things to build. Quite the opposite.

And yet, the message we’re sending to the next generation is that software development may no longer be a viable career. Students are reconsidering computer science degrees and choosing other fields because they’re worried the jobs they’re preparing for won’t exist by the time they graduate. I think we’re making a terrible mistake, and the consequences may not become apparent for another four to six years.

By then, I suspect we’ll have discovered that AI hasn’t eliminated the need for good software engineers. It’s simply changed what those engineers are capable of producing. We’ll also have spent years discouraging young people from entering the profession, leaving us with a much smaller pipeline of new talent just as the demand for software continues to grow. This is exactly the same thing that happened after the original dot com bubble burst.

I’ve been in this industry long enough to see plenty of technologies come and go, and I can’t think of a single major advancement in software development that ultimately resulted in less software being created. Better tools have consistently opened the door to more ambitious projects, not fewer. Yes, the tools are changing, and yes the skills we need are certainly evolving, but the need for people who understand how to design, build, and maintain good software isn’t going away.

I think we’re going to look back on this moment and wonder why we spent so much time convincing the next generation that we wouldn’t need them.