This is hard to write, and it has been spiralling me into depression lately.
I have 15 years of software engineering experience, and I think the industry as I knew it is dead.
My dream was always to reach retirement through a software business: SaaS or digital products. I've built a few over my career, with varying degrees of success, but I'm not in a position to retire (which I would define similarly to MJ, meaning I can be comfortable for the rest of my life, not have to worry about expenses like going to Starbucks every day, and don't have to penny-pinch, etc), and my aspirations were much larger. Now I doubt it's possible at all.
I'm seeing AI that is so good at software development it can one-shot a complex game engine, and the engine is actually good.
My background is mainly full-stack web projects, plus UX and UI design. I can't see what I could build that AI couldn't instantly copy or simply replace.
Is it time to look beyond software? Should I accept that it's dead, discard most of my experience, and start a business in the physical world: buying and selling commodities, or a physical service that is harder to replace, or at least will take longer?
And I should say, I have been one of the biggest anti-AI people out there publicly, but I've reached the conclusion that even though a lot of the code that it outputs is terrible from a business perspective, I don't think it matters anymore.
@MJ DeMarco what are your feelings on this? If you were starting out now, would you abandon the idea of a software business?
I have 15 years of software engineering experience, and I think the industry as I knew it is dead.
My dream was always to reach retirement through a software business: SaaS or digital products. I've built a few over my career, with varying degrees of success, but I'm not in a position to retire (which I would define similarly to MJ, meaning I can be comfortable for the rest of my life, not have to worry about expenses like going to Starbucks every day, and don't have to penny-pinch, etc), and my aspirations were much larger. Now I doubt it's possible at all.
I'm seeing AI that is so good at software development it can one-shot a complex game engine, and the engine is actually good.
My background is mainly full-stack web projects, plus UX and UI design. I can't see what I could build that AI couldn't instantly copy or simply replace.
Is it time to look beyond software? Should I accept that it's dead, discard most of my experience, and start a business in the physical world: buying and selling commodities, or a physical service that is harder to replace, or at least will take longer?
And I should say, I have been one of the biggest anti-AI people out there publicly, but I've reached the conclusion that even though a lot of the code that it outputs is terrible from a business perspective, I don't think it matters anymore.
@MJ DeMarco what are your feelings on this? If you were starting out now, would you abandon the idea of a software business?
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