It'll be a large cost reduction over time. The median software developer in the US was at around $112,000 in salary plus benefits on top of that (healthcare, stock compensation), prior to the job plunge. Call it a minimum of $130,000 just at the median.

They'll hire those people back at half their total compensation, with no stock, far fewer benefits, to clean up AI slop. And or just contract it overseas at ~1/3 the former total cost.

Another ten years from now the AI systems will have improved drastically, reducing the slop factor. There's no scenario where it goes back to how it was, that era is over. And the cost will decline substantially versus the peak for US developers.

Cleaning up code requires more skill than creating it (see Kernhigans quote)

Why does that fact stop being true when the code is created by AI?

Based on... what? The more you try to "reduce costs" by letting LLMs take the reigns, the more slop will eventually have to be cleaned up by senior developers. The mess will get exponentially bigger and harder to resolve.

Because I think it won't just be a linear relationship. If you let 1 vibe coder replace a team of 10, you'll need a lot more than 10 people to clean it up and maintain it going forward when they hit the wall.

Personally I'm looking forward to the news stories about major companies collapsing under the weight of their LLM-induced tech debt.