Dustin Ewers arguing AI will create more software jobs rather than taking away.
AI tools create a significant productivity boost for developers. Different folks report different gains, but most people who try AI code generation recognize its ability to increase velocity. Many people think that means we’re going to need fewer developers, and our industry is going to slowly circle the drain.
This view is based on a misunderstanding of why people pay for software. A business creates software because they think that it will give them some sort of economic advantage. The investment needs to pay for itself with interest. There are many software projects that would help a business, but businesses aren’t going to do them because the return on investment doesn’t make sense.
When software development becomes more efficient, the ROI of any given software project increases, which unlocks more projects. That legacy modernization project that no one wants to tackle because it’s super costly. Now you can make AI do most of the work. That project now makes sense. That cool new software product idea that might be awesome but might also crash and burn. AI can make it cheaper for a business to roll the dice. Cheaper software means people are going to want more of it. More software means more jobs for increasingly efficient software developers.
Economists call this Jevons Paradox.
This gives me hope.
Bonus: I first learnt about Jevons Paradox while reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry For The Future.