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IMO, if this ends up occuring, it will follow how other practitioner roles have evolved. Take medicine, and doctors for eg: there's a high bar to reach to be able to do a specialist surgery, until then you hone up your skills and practice. Compensation wise it isn't lucrative from the get-go, but can get so once you reach the specialist level. At that point they are liable for the work done. Hence such roles are typically licensed (CAs, lawyers, etc).

So if I have to make a few 5 year predictions:

1. Key human engineer skills will be to take liabilty for the output produced by agents. You will be responsible for the signoff, and any good/bad that comes from it.

2. Some engineering roles/areas will become a "licensed" play - the way canada is for other engineering disciplines.

3. Compensation at the entry level will be lower, and the expected time to ramp up to productive level will be larger.

4. Careers will meaningfully start only at the senior level. At the junior level, your focus is to learn enough of the fundamentals, patterns and design principles so you reach the senior level and be a net positive in the team.



> At the junior level, your focus is to learn enough of the fundamentals, patterns and design principles so you reach the senior level and be a net positive in the team.

I suspect that juniors will not want to do this, because the end result of becoming a scenior is not lucrative enough given the pace of LLM advancement.


There’s a sweet spot right now to be in. Early enfough career to have gotten in the door, but young enfough to be mailable and open to new ways.


1. Already true, no company will make the AI agent liable for its output, it’s always the programmer

2. Unlikely, as most software won’t result in death/injury… whereas a structural engineering project is much more life threatening.

3. I actually think entry level engineers will be expected to ramp up to productive levels much much quicker due to the help of AI

4. Already true


Had to laugh at #4… that’s where I thought we were now.


Canada?? They can’t build a subway station in 5 years nevermind restructure a massive job sector like this lmao


You're being downvoted but you're actually spot on

Calgary was supposed to have a new train line, planning has been in motion for years. Back in 2019 when I bought my house, the new train was supposed to open in 2025. As far as I know not a single piece of track has been placed yet. So... Yes


Yes this is status quo in Toronto but it’s a Canada-wide corruption issue.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/eglinton-crosstown-op...


Hey, they knocked down Eau Claire. So.. progress?




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