Well, there are so many more lower hanging fruits that LLMs can actually replace before they get to developers -- basically every middle manager, and a significant chunk of all white collar jobs.

I'm not convinced software developers will be replaced - probably less will be needed and the exact work will be transformed a bit, but an expert human still has to be in the loop, otherwise all you get is a bunch of nonsense.

Nonetheless, it may very well transform society and we will have to adapt to it.

I don’t see middle managers taking the initial brunt unless they truly are just pushing papers around. At companies of sufficient size, they do play a role of separation between C suite and the grunts. To me, certain low-performing grunts will be the first out. Then a team reorg to rebalance. Then some middle managers will be out as fewer of them can handle multiple teams.

Not all software development will be automated immediatly. But I've noticed that many skills I've built are lessened in worth with every model release.

Having a lot of specifics about a programming environment memorized for example used to be the difference between building something in a few hours and a week, but now is pretty unimportant. Same with being able to do some quick data wrangling on the command line. LLMs are also good at parsing a lot of code or even binary format quickly and explaining how it works. That used to be a skill. Knowing a toolbox of technologies to use is needed less. Et cetera.

They haven't come for the meat of what makes a good engineer yet. For example, the systems-level interfacing with external needs and solving those pragmatically is still hard. But the tide is rising.

>I'm not convinced software developers will be replaced

Most of us will probably need to shift to security. While you can probably build AI specifically to make things more secure, that implies it could also attack things as well, so it ends up being a cat-and-mouse game that adjusts to what options are available.