Comment by solatic

Let's put it this way - I don't think you could run a Fortune 500 company with 2-3 engineers. I do think there's still a role for "Non-Functional Software Engineers" who are hired to take a long-term perspective on systems maintenance for the golden geese that keep the company's revenues rolling in, handle vendor migrations, stuff like that, which is very different from the responsive, short-term perspective that Product needs. Companies will probably still benefit from people dedicated to their analytics / BI / data pipelines, as an internal product. Roles like Security, Legal, GRC will survive, not because AI can't replace them technically, but because someone still needs to be held accountable. Headcount will still rise with the number of products offered, and eventually you still need the systems and guardrails needed to keep that number of people aligned. All of that is complexity.