Is the golden era of the (software) engineer over? (Republished FULL Episode) | Two by Two | The Ken

We have unlocked the full and unedited subscriber version of episode four which we released on August 22 for Premium subscribers of The Ken and on Apple Podcasts. Now you can stream it wherever you listen to your podcasts for free for a few weeks.
Software engineering careers used to be a ladder. You studied for 4 years, got a job as a fresher, and could virtually take for granted a steady career filled with learning opportunities, salary hikes, and role promotions.
In fact being an engineer was so cool that we mocked MBAs and MBA-types - “suits” - for their desperation to find that elusive technical co-founder. The one who would translate an idea (common) into code and products.
Except, that’s increasingly not true.
AnNYT story ( www.nytimes.co... ) published earlier this week put it best.
“I have a pretty good sense how fast the progress that students should make in a semester should be,” he said. “In 14 years, I’ve never seen students make the kind of progress that they made this year.”
And he knew exactly why that was the case. For the first time, Mr. Ammirati had encouraged his students to use generative artificial intelligence as part of their process - “think of generative A.I as your co-founder,” he recalled telling them.
Many AI chatbots are fully capable of writing code now. So your technical co-founder could be an AI?
Where does that leave engineers? Are we staring at the end of the golden era for engineers?
Welcome to episode six of Two by Two, The Ken’s weekly podcast that asks the most interesting and often uncomfortable questions on topics we all want to know more about. And we do that through the lens of a 2×2 matrix!
Earlier this week, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, my co-host, and I met with Amod Malviya, co-founder of Udaan and the former CTO at Flipkart, and Kailash Nadh, CTO at Zerodha*.
Both Amod and Kailash have been programmers and engineers for over two decades now. They are also both deeply in love with their craft. Naturally, they are passionate about engineering and have strong views on its future.
Additional Reading:
Computational Thinking ( www.cs.cmu.edu... ) by Jeannette M. Wing
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering ( / 530415.the_art_of_doin... ) by Richard Hamming
This episode of Two by Two was produced by Anushka Mukherjee. Hari Krishna is the lead writer and researcher for this episode. Rajiv C N, our resident sound engineer is the audio producer.
Please rate, share and follow us on your favorite streaming platform. It helps more like-minded people like you to find out by Two by Two.
*Zerodha’s perennial fund Rainmatter Capital is an investor in The Ken.
Two by Two
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September 23, 2024
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[@avgspacelover]

I dont really think they are the right guests to discuss this, they deal with top ten percentile talent in tech on a dalily basis and that is their usual locus. if you ahve to discuss this theme, you would need to bring people who are more familiar with org inefficiency kailash was talking about.

[@tiktoktiktik4820]

Such an irritating moderator. He's always interrupting amodh and kailaish when they are making intersting points. Replace HIM with ai

[@rutvikrs]

AI see what you did there. 😂

[@BrokenRecord-i7q]

great points made by Amod Malviya

[@Soham-pr8rf]

It was never a golden era for software engineering.

[@rutvikrs]

That requires an explanation of the pay packages at the very least. Let's leave other things aside for a moment.

[@abcproduction6819]

These people think they can replace Engineer, lol. If some engineers decide, they can build The B.S. KEN company within a week with AI. and replace all your writers, you staff and even you CEO.

[@vaibhavgupta20]

+1

[@Soham-pr8rf]

+10000

[@jaiwadhawan4802]

Why don't they do it then?