Even if AI advances continue, for quite a while there's likely still going to be the 'Steve Jobs' role. That is, even if AI coding agents can, in the future, replace entire teams of SWEs, competently making all implementation decisions with no guidance from a tech-savvy human, the best software will likely still involve a human deciding what should be built and being very picky about how, exactly, it should externally behave.

I don't know if it makes sense to call that person an SWE, and some people currently employed as SWEs either won't be good at this or aren't interested in doing it. But the existing pool of SWEs is probably the largest concentration of people who'll end up doing this job, because it's the largest concentration of people who've thought a lot about, and developed taste with respect to, how software should work.

This matches what I'm seeing. I've been building software for a long time, but building more now with AI than I ever could with a traditional team. But the throughput that's helpful is from knowing what to build and what tradeoffs matter. The AI doesn't have that. It's a force multiplier on experience, not a replacement for it.