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‘AI is already eating its own’: Prompt engineering is quickly going extinct
(www.fastcompany.com)
this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
56 points (92.4% liked)
Technology
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Hiring someone who's a "prompt engineer" is like hiring someone who says they're good at googling.
The majority of people I've worked with are dog shit at looking up information. I'd be happy with "good at googling."
I used to be good at googling. But then Google changed what googling did.
and the tack on reddit trick has fallen to a fraction of it's former usefulness
I mean... Being good at Googling is a pretty necessary prerequisite to working in IT. It's like a sizeable portion of the job.
"Prompt engineering." 🤣
"AI" really brings out the goofies, and their even goofier targets lap it up.
Hopefully “vibe coding” will be next.
Now AI can write the prompts...
WHY
Today, strong AI prompting is simply an expected skill, not a stand-alone role.
If a company tells me they expect me to be good at writing prompts at least I know I can dodge that bullet and just never ever work there. Nice.
Which raises a larger question: Did prompt engineering roles ever truly exist?
All experts interviewed for this piece were skeptical. The market itself was real enough: The North American prompt engineering market was valued at $75.5 million in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 32.8%. But whether that translated into formally titled roles is another matter.
.... How can the market be "real enough" if we can't tell if any jobs actually existed? Maybe I just don't know enough about economics.