Random Thoughts on Software Engineering

The Coming Demographic Crisis in IT and Digital Engineering

engineering-demographics

There is a perfect storm of circumstances (trade wars, isolationism, AI adoption hype and organizational / budget chaos it creates, mass layoffs of staff, including software engineers in tech giants - FAANG, MAANG, MAMAA, GAFAM, FANGMAN, BAT, BANG, NATU, TAMAA, MMAANGO, the latter, I believe, describes the contemporary key players the best - Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Amazon, NVidia, Google and OpenAI, salary polarization, hiring freezes, remote work and nearshoring, DEI backlash - impactful to a different degree in various regions and sometimes interdependent) that coincide at the moment which leads to changes in the software engineering labor market.
The number of software engineers worldwide continues to grow, don't get me wrong, which on itself is a statement on the effectiveness of AI incorporation in the sphere, which is a topic on its own, but the demographic profile changes. Here is data on the topic that suggests that the number of software engineers still grows with about 1 million annually(yes, as the total grows that million indicates a gradual slowdown in growth proportionally - but it is still a much more pronounced growth than a lot of other industries), post pandemic, but the distribution is what is concerning.

It is hard to predict the future, but demographics is one of the instances where that is not true. They play in long time spans, there is widely available data, and you cannot change anything dramatically in the mid-term.
So, we can make two conclusions:

  1. The law of Bob Martin that every 5 years the software engineering industry as number of people engaged - doubles (and thus half of people in it have less than 5 years of experience) is no longer valid.
  2. Companies for the past 2 years are hiring junior engineers in limited numbers if at all and the market does not seem to have a steady demand or willingness to invest in junior staff - the software bootcamp industry took a major hit there. If that continues for 2 more years - and there is every indication it will - there will be a gap of junior staff numbers, which propagating up the demographic pyramid of software engineers will make it a tree, really, and materialize as a shortage of staff in a few years.
    Yes - do not believe AI will replace software engineers anytime soon - maybe that is a topic for another post.

It seems now is the perfect time to study computer science - by the time you are done there will be a severe shortage of talent which you can ride at the start of your career.