1. Coding isn’t the bottleneck – figuring out what to build is.
“Or put differently: code as a means to an end vs code as the end.” – hellisothers
“If coding is easy, why is software so damn buggy?” – firebot
2. Senior engineers add value through system thinking, debugging and handling real‑world constraints, not just typing syntax.
“Debugging is hard.” – anonzzzies
“If it shouldn’t fail it will at some point… we usually don’t take that into account until the third or so time …” – Ekaros
“The regulatory regimes that control medical and financial privacy … are significantly lighter … than the regimes that control material quality for bridges and tunnels.” – woodruffw
3. LLMs will automate code generation but move the difficulty to review, integration and long‑term maintenance.
“Maintenance over time is 90 % of the work anyways.” – xmprt
“LLMs can be part of the process but human judgment is still king.” – Ozzie_osman
“The few people who manage to write good quality production apps with AI are developers whether they like it or not …” – aforwardslash
4. High salaries reflect broader engineering responsibilities—customer interrogation, architecture, reliability—not merely writing code.
“The gigantic salaries paid to the most prolific employees is not due to their ability to write code. It is due to their ability to interrogate the shit out of the customer until they finally reveal the true requirements.” – dofm
“Supply of good programmers … is low because it requires above‑average intelligence and a lot of education, while demand for software has been much higher …” – tripleee
These four themes capture the most recurring arguments in the discussion: the real difficulty lies in problem definition, design, and oversight; senior expertise is about system‑level thinking; AI shifts rather than eliminates the hard work; and compensation mirrors the wider scope of software engineering.