PANews reported on February 10 that Avichal, a partner at Electric Capital, said on social media that the "golden age" of software engineers in San Francisco has ended. From 2000 to 2020, software engineers were the representatives of high-paying professions, but with more than 100,000 layoffs in the technology industry in 2024, the globalization of remote work, and the rapid development of AI technology, the wealth path of this profession has changed fundamentally. He compared the rise of ChatGPT to the "2008 moment" in the field of software engineering, which changed the market landscape.
However, Avichal pointed out that it is not all bad news. The future will be the era of small, efficient teams, and AI-driven efficiency improvements will give rise to more billion-dollar companies built by 10-person teams. AI-first companies will dominate the market, and designers, product managers, and domain experts will have unprecedented influence, driving the rise of a new generation of entrepreneurs.
He predicted that as software production costs continue to fall, the enterprise software industry will undergo profound changes, and the era of "easy money" for ordinary software engineers has ended, and a new San Francisco "gold rush" has quietly begun.
