Why AI hasn’t replaced software engineers, and won’t

AI Snake Oil · 1 month ago

Software engineer employment has continued growing despite AI adoption, with a Federal Reserve study finding only a 3 percentage point annual slowdown in growth compared to pre-AI projections. High-profile layoffs attributed to AI (at Block, Snap, and Intuit) were actually driven by financial pressures, with New York's WARN Act filings showing only one company citing AI for layoffs affecting roughly 0.2% of workers. The claim that AI replacing code-writing will eliminate jobs misunderstands software engineering, where decision-making and delivery verification remain human bottlenecks even as AI compresses the execution layer.