'Tech winter looms': Influencer says software engineering no longer guarantees success, wealth

Once a booming sector, tech engineering is facing challenges as big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Apple and Meta are reducing headcounts over AI integration and other factors. 

Deedy Das, a tech influencer, sounded alarm about an impending "winter" for the industry players in tech engineering. Through a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Deedy highlighted stark differences between the current landscape and the industry's state two decades ago.

Deedy's warnings come amid a backdrop of shifting trends in the tech job market. 

Deedy began by mocking the popular phrase “Study CS and work in Edtech.” Further explaining the dire situation as of now, Deedy pointed out how, despite the huge layoffs, companies are not willing to hire. 

Despite significant layoffs, companies exhibit reluctance towards new hiring initiatives. Startups, in particular, are leaning towards experienced hires, shunning fresh graduates.

"Startups often dislike hiring new grads because the cost to train them and get them up to speed (unless it's in something new grads know more about, like AI) is quite high. Colleges have such high %age of CS majors who are NOT finding jobs today," he wrote.

Reflecting on the evolution of technology's role in society, Deedy pointed out how, compared to 2000 when technology played a relatively smaller role in people's lives, the present-day reliance on tech has surged. However, this surge hasn't translated into expanded job opportunities, as companies prioritise efficiency over scale, he said.

"Companies are trending to being smaller and more efficient, not large and IBM-like," read one of his posts on X.

Moreover, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) poses a looming threat to traditional job roles. Deedy underscores how AI algorithms are progressively replacing tasks previously performed by humans. 

"It's not there yet, but AI is also slowly and steadily eating away at jobs humans used to do. LLMs will only write more code over time. BigTech fueled a lot of the hiring with their consistent 20% YoY growth but they realize revenue doesn't come for free anymore," he wrote

Deedy acknowledged the cyclical nature of technological trends but is skeptical about a swift resurgence in the tech job market.

While he stopped short of painting a doomsday scenario, he foresees a prolonged period of stagnation before the sector experiences another boom cycle.

"This is not meant to be a doomer post, but I just don't see a future where it really returns to its heyday. I can see people migrate away from software for a bit before coming back to it in the next boom cycle. I don't have any good answers, and many people disagree!" he wrote.

Deedy's posts garnered mixed reactions.

One user wrote, "Definitely agree that the age of "learn to code and get guaranteed six figure jobs" is over. It's very much the end of a cycle before another boom comes up."

"Keep studying CS kids. The economy tends to render all such prognostications wrong. The key is to be flexible and pursue hard things that others can't or won't do. AI will not replace true software engineering anytime in the next 100+ years. It will reduce the need for scripters, copypasta coding and mundane business configuration tasks. But it cannot write novel code, which anyone who uses LLMs to help code knows well," wrote another user.

In April 2024, there was a wave of mass layoffs that impacted some of the world’s biggest companies including Tesla, Google, and Apple with about over 20,000 losing their jobs. The layoffs continued the trend which began in January 2024, with a total of 70,000 tech jobs being lost in the first 4 months of this year. Tesla led the charts with nearly 14,000 job cuts. According to reports, 800 job cuts in America were blamed on Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing humans. Apple also joined the list, issuing pink slips to around 600 employees in its self-driving cars and special project groups