There are non technical people building and shipping software. That’s fine, but not all software is equal: the software you release and it’s behind an ecommerce platform (or a bank, or a hospital, or the train system) is not like the software behind your custom-made productivity app. I think for the former software we still need people with the title “software engineer”

And as systems become more complex with time, we will need more people with the title “software engineer”

That does make it sound like there are only 2 types of software. The “serious” and the “unserious”. There’s probably a few dozen types rather, it’s much less black and white. At a client we have non-technical people ship “serious” software based on their 20+ years of experience in their respective field that definitely doesn’t need the same approach as a banking or health care application, but it would also be an insult to group that with productivity apps. No juniors or coding knowledge needed; LLMs fill that gap.

I as a senior am still called in to consult and shoot down attempts to actually integrate it into the wider system without triggering a full technical review.

i suspect many licensed civil and other engineers may be looking at the currant situation as the moment when software people stop being able to just call themselves “engineers “ because they can type source code into an editor just like drawing a plausible bridge on paper doesn’t qualify you as being able to actually build one.