The software job market is going to split in two

Found myself in Backagården once again this weekend, building software for the international left. This has been a bit of a happy place for me for some time now. This weekend bought a surprise happiness bonus, when I realised how much fun I was having coding without access to my employer-provided Opus 4.5 subscription.

A similar experience about a year earlier saw me switching off Copilot's code completion functionality after realising how boring it had made everything feel. This time felt different somehow. While considering the reason for that difference, it hit me that the real effect of these new tools on the job market might be becoming clear now.

The difference between the old autocomplete and this agent workflow with Opus 4.5 is that this new thing actually kind of works. Most of the downsides are the same – worse, even – especially in the increased estrangement from the work. But the fact that it's become a viable way to achieve results changes certain things.

One thing it changes is for all these 80s guys competing to see whose company can be the most maniacally obsessed with the new golden hammer. I think they're going to get to see some of their visions fulfilled. And this means that the software engineers they employ are going to lose their ability to code independently.

That last part there is based on what I've seen happen in my own abilities during periods when I've leaned more on these frontier models. Switching off Copilot autocomplete after more than a year of use took me weeks to recover from. Opus 4.5 had only been in my life a few months when I had my day without it in Backagården, but I already felt the same nicotine-like craving for it and the same sensation of rustiness in my thinking while working through problems independently of the magic answer machine.

I've already experienced the humiliation of bombing a coding interview due to being surprised by a "no Copilot" rule during my first period of dependency. I'm confident in saying that these more extreme people who've completely abandoned coding in favour of prompting models to write code for them aren't going to be able to pass fizzbuzz independently after a year or two. So I think those people, and the people who want to hire them, are necessarily going to become a distinct job market with its own approach to things like recruitment.

In a sense, then, I'm accepting that some reduction in the amount of available coding jobs is likely to be a reality of this new phase of the job market. I'm not convinced it's a major percentage, though. Even accounting for the improvements in Opus 4.5, I still think it feels more like the invention of the microwave than the invention of the car. Every commercial kitchen has a microwave, but Wetherspoons is the only place I can think of that's well-known for microwaving everything.