This paradox almost doesn't matter.

Non-technical business stakeholders who own requirements for line-of-business apps can generate *working* (to them) end-to-end prototypes just by typing good-enough English into a text box.

Not just apps, too! Anything! Spreadsheets, fancy reports, customer service, you name it --- type what you need into the box and wait for it to vend what took an entire team days/weeks to do. Add "ultra-think really hard" to the prompt to trigger the big boy models and get the "really good" stuff. It sounds a little 1984, but whatever, it works.

Design? Engineering? QA? All of those teams are just speed bumps now. Sales, Legal, Core business functions, and a few really experienced nerds is all you need. Which has always been the dream for many business owners.

It doesn't matter that LLMs provide 60% of the solution. 60% > 0%, and that's enough to justify offshoring everything and everyone in the delivery pipeline to cheaper labor (or use that as a threat to suppress wages and claw back workers' rights), including senior engineers who are being increasingly pressured to adopt these tools.

A quick jaunt through /r/cscareerquestions on Reddit is enough to see that this train blasted off from its station with a full tank of fuel for the long-haul.

There's always the possibility that several really bad things happen that makes the entire industry remember that software engineering is an actual discipline and that treating employees well is generally a good thing. For now, all of this feels permanent, and all of it sucks.