The Death of the Software Laborer (The Resurrection)

We generally don’t need thousands of people with shovels anymore.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t need those thousands of people. We just scaled them up and across the stack of work. Now need them to

• operate the machines
• survey and lay out the work
• install pipe, conduit, drainage, rebar, forms, and concrete
• weld, wire, assemble, and finish
• maintain and repair equipment
• inspect quality and safety
• coordinate crews, materials, and sequencing
• handle the awkward, irregular work machines are bad at
• make decisions when reality doesn’t match the plan

The excavator doesn’t decide where it should dig a hole. Nor does it decide what you should put in the hole. Nor why it’s digging a hole. It just digs.

We do need far fewer people per unit of output, but we can produce so much more output. For a job that required 100 people with shovels, today you might need 10 split across the various roles.

And then you can do 10 more jobs at the same time.

AI is the excavator.

We generally don’t need thousands of people typing code into their code editors for a particular project. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need those software engineers. We need our engineers to decide what to build, how it should work, how the pieces fit together, whether it is correct, and what to do when it isn’t.

We don’t need software engineers to write the code.

But boy, do we still need software engineers.