Janitor Engineers [0] are already a thing? Damn. Also, all links in this article starting from the "Why AI code fails at scale" section are dead for some reason, even though it was written only 5 days ago. That raises some questions...

EDIT: Not trying to offend anyone with this [0], I've actually had the same half-joking retirement plan since the dawn of vibe coding, to become an "all-organic-code" consultant who untangles and cleans up AI-generated mess.

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flir 12 hours ago | parent [-]

I think specialising in brownfield has always been a thing. If anything, it's greenfield that's the rarity.

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sseagull 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’ve always found the pioneer, settler, town planner model to be a great way of thinking about this. Successful, long-term projects or organizations eventually can use all 3 types.

Maybe vibe coding replaces some pioneering work, but that still leaves a lot for settlers to do.

(I admit I’m generally in the settler category)

https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-to...

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ChrisMarshallNY 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thinking of retired COBOL programmers that still have a market...

	▲	jlokier 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There's still a market, but when I looked into COBOL work out of curiosity (I've never been anywhere near it in real life), the salaries I found were surprisingly low, compared with common modern languages. Perhaps the old adage "it's getting hard to find X employees [at the price we are willing to pay]" applies. That surprised me because I've seen articles and heard podcasts for years where they've said COBOL programmers are well paid due to scarcity, though never quoting amounts.
	▲	scorpioxy 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I wonder if COBOL projects these days, being brownfield by nature, are less political and stressful than brownfield web development projects.