Entrepreneur

Hello there, quick bit about me, I run a marketing agency that exclusively works with B2B saas startups. I don't say that to promote, I say that to give context that I meet and work with alot of founders and developers. I also was formerly a full stack developer.

There are still plenty of people paying for software engineers, the difference I've seen is the barrier on the work.

There are really a few points to consider here.

1. AI. I'll be honest, AI has made an impact everywhere, but probably not on the scale you might think. AI is nowhere near advanced enough to replace the developer, I'm mainly just seeing it be used by the developers. You can't give a non-technical founder GPT and expect him to piece together his own SaaS with it.
2. No Code builders. A weird one. Technically a non-developer can build an app with one of these, but definitely not a traditional business person, I know millionaires who have paid me to help them setup zapier connections between their Lead gen ads and their CRM. I think smart developers are learning how to use Bubble and Retool for projects to deliver projects quicker, and I think technical founders are using them to build their own apps, but there's not a huge market of people who were going to spend 50k on an app, and then decided 'nah I'll build it myself'.
3. The self-cannibalisation of the industry. A huge number of apps are made to provide a service that previously would have needed to be custom. Imagine that 1000 wealth management businesses a year go to developers to get their own internal tool made for customer interaction. Then a saas startup decides to build a tool for this job that can cover 99% of these companies. The next year, 990 of them sign up for this SaaS and 10 get a custom tool made. The developer who made the app has taken 990 development jobs off the market by doing this.
4. Web developer doesn't mean what it used to. Developers are an inherent part of the industry I work in, but what they're required for has changed over the years. Web developers used to build the front end websites, nowadays me and my people do that with Wordpress, Webflow and Framer. Some people do it themselves with Wix and Squarespace.
5. Like you said about wordpress setups, I do know a guy who runs a fairly successful niche social media site. 20 years ago, that was an extremely custom job. Now, he runs it on a 200 dollar customised wordpress theme, but I would say this is the rarity.

Technology, outsourcing and the quantity of people in the software dev space has lowered the bar, and honestly it's part of why I switched to marketing, because generating interest, leads and customers has become the far harder part of the equation nowadays, but that doesn't mean the role of a SWE is dead, just gotta change your focus.

I know a guy who runs a Bubble development agency, his company is making alot of money, because yeah they charge a lower upfront fee than most developers would, but they need half the man-hours to achieve the same result, and they charge the exact same ongoing monthly maintenance and support fee that other agencies charge.

I also know a guy who runs a dev agency that doesn't use any no-low code builders, but he's niched down on advanced difficult topics. Their most recent project is built around using Lidar functionality in the new Iphone models to capture accurate measurements of property for asset management. As you'd guess, their charging a bomb.

SWE's are gonna be needed for a long time, but the focus will change. Hell, half of what I do in marketing is based on software that didn't exist 10-15 years ago. A client recently joined my agency because we 'seemed the most confident on integrating Threads into our social media strategy', a social network which didn't exist 4 months ago.

Just gotta keep pivoting.