The nice thing about programming becoming less lucrative due to AI is that all of the nerds will be losers again, and so it might regain it’s previous status as an honest signal of earnestness & interest in systematizations of science/society/the world.
My prediction for the next few years (or until AGI) is that there’s going to start to be a winner take all approach to computer science talent. The majority of the job of software engineering will be automated (if it isn’t already). There are still robustness pockets that human software engineers can help fill for now. But I expect top AI researchers to continue making exorbitant amounts of money, even if little software engineering is involved. So, computer science talent will start to loosely resemble the competitiveness of professional sports, where there is a step function change between compensation if you “make it” or not. And the hiring bar will be extremely high. You can already start to see glimpses of this with the weight people put on Olympiad contestants when recruiting.
The nice thing about programming becoming less lucrative due to AI is that all of the nerds will be losers again, and so it might regain it’s previous status as an honest signal of earnestness & interest in systematizations of science/society/the world.
was being a nerd ever high status outside of the bay area?
No but it sure brought a lot of people to the bay area who are not anything like the people I want to hang out with
My prediction for the next few years (or until AGI) is that there’s going to start to be a winner take all approach to computer science talent. The majority of the job of software engineering will be automated (if it isn’t already). There are still robustness pockets that human software engineers can help fill for now. But I expect top AI researchers to continue making exorbitant amounts of money, even if little software engineering is involved. So, computer science talent will start to loosely resemble the competitiveness of professional sports, where there is a step function change between compensation if you “make it” or not. And the hiring bar will be extremely high. You can already start to see glimpses of this with the weight people put on Olympiad contestants when recruiting.