I mean it’s totally about how you sell it, especially these days with any online business being saturated AF.

I also think software engineers is oversaturated now. For years now, especially since covid, you’ve had all these boot camps and influencers constantly bombarding the general public with “become a coder or data analyst and make bank while working from home”.

Now the entry level market has so many people from self taught and boot camps.

Plus AI can be a legitimate concern for entry level devs. It’s pretty good now from what I hear for simple coding or tasks. Imagine in a few years, hell 10-20 years from now.

As long as systems that automate are being built, there’s always demand for a SWE.

SWE are definitely in high demand, it’s just shifted.

I think you’re only seeing it through the lens of an employee. Where you’re blindly applying to jobs, build a micro SaaS and promote it on TikTok. Watch how quickly your perspective changes

being a software engineer is a commodity. To make it you have to come up with a good business idea

This logic makes no sense to me.

I’m assuming this is just sprouting from you being down on yourself rn.

Quality SWEs are of value IMO, but how do you stand out from the herd?

My company markets a larger dev shop that has a digital agency as part of it. A big thing that works is focus, showing case studies where you’ve nailed specific types of work that can be re marketed / replicated. A targeted, replicatable use case lets you hone in and be more surgical with outbound and with selling.

Comparing SWEs to Wordpress sites… lol cmon

Hello there, quick bit about me, I run a marketing agency that exclusively works with B2B saas startups. I don’t say that to promote, I say that to give context that I meet and work with alot of founders and developers. I also was formerly a full stack developer.

There are still plenty of people paying for software engineers, the difference I’ve seen is the barrier on the work.

There are really a few points to consider here.

1. AI. I’ll be honest, AI has made an impact everywhere, but probably not on the scale you might think. AI is nowhere near advanced enough to replace the developer, I’m mainly just seeing it be used by the developers. You can’t give a non-technical founder GPT and expect him to piece together his own SaaS with it.
2. No Code builders. A weird one. Technically a non-developer can build an app with one of these, but definitely not a traditional business person, I know millionaires who have paid me to help them setup zapier connections between their Lead gen ads and their CRM. I think smart developers are learning how to use Bubble and Retool for projects to deliver projects quicker, and I think technical founders are using them to build their own apps, but there’s not a huge market of people who were going to spend 50k on an app, and then decided ‘nah I’ll build it myself’.
3. The self-cannibalisation of the industry. A huge number of apps are made to provide a service that previously would have needed to be custom. Imagine that 1000 wealth management businesses a year go to developers to get their own internal tool made for customer interaction. Then a saas startup decides to build a tool for this job that can cover 99% of these companies. The next year, 990 of them sign up for this SaaS and 10 get a custom tool made. The developer who made the app has taken 990 development jobs off the market by doing this.
4. Web developer doesn’t mean what it used to. Developers are an inherent part of the industry I work in, but what they’re required for has changed over the years. Web developers used to build the front end websites, nowadays me and my people do that with Wordpress, Webflow and Framer. Some people do it themselves with Wix and Squarespace.
5. Like you said about wordpress setups, I do know a guy who runs a fairly successful niche social media site. 20 years ago, that was an extremely custom job. Now, he runs it on a 200 dollar customised wordpress theme, but I would say this is the rarity.

Technology, outsourcing and the quantity of people in the software dev space has lowered the bar, and honestly it’s part of why I switched to marketing, because generating interest, leads and customers has become the far harder part of the equation nowadays, but that doesn’t mean the role of a SWE is dead, just gotta change your focus.

I know a guy who runs a Bubble development agency, his company is making alot of money, because yeah they charge a lower upfront fee than most developers would, but they need half the man-hours to achieve the same result, and they charge the exact same ongoing monthly maintenance and support fee that other agencies charge.

I also know a guy who runs a dev agency that doesn’t use any no-low code builders, but he’s niched down on advanced difficult topics. Their most recent project is built around using Lidar functionality in the new Iphone models to capture accurate measurements of property for asset management. As you’d guess, their charging a bomb.

SWE’s are gonna be needed for a long time, but the focus will change. Hell, half of what I do in marketing is based on software that didn’t exist 10-15 years ago. A client recently joined my agency because we ‘seemed the most confident on integrating Threads into our social media strategy’, a social network which didn’t exist 4 months ago.

Just gotta keep pivoting.

It’s like all industries. Good ones, no

It’s like that for every job in tech right now

“In theory, if I was a unicorn in my craft (SWE) I should be able to create an application that gets alot of traffic and revenue.”

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I think your flaw lies in this assumption. The more important skill isn’t in building magical products, but in finding the right people to sell them to and selling them. I.e. finding product market fit. That’s business, not technical ability. So being a unicorn in your domain won’t help at all with this in my opinion. You might as well be trying to sell a powerpoint deck with all the magical features outlined and it’s still not easy. You might as well do that because it’s way faster to edit a powerpoint based on people’s feedback than to commit new code.

I don’t think what you said make sense…

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why is a SWE craft is making an application that gets a lot of traffic and revenue ?

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the whole point of SWE is to make custom software dictate by business

the business person is the one with the idea that attracts revenue and traffic

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if SWE field is over saturated then you should be able to hire any decent engineer at cheap price ? according to your assertion of over supply of SWE this would mean prices for SWE would crater.

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your last statement makes me really question your 8 year of exp in various fields as you stated. Apparently everything can be build in word press and plugs in now a day ? why do we need anyone to write custom code, every single idea is can be made by some combination of word press and plug ins right ? ( seriously ? )

I am someone who’s trying to understand the technical side on all of these ideas in my head, but it’s hard, because my strength exactly lies where your weaknesses are… and vice versa.

Yes, the industry is oversaturated right now, despite what some may try to tell you. There are tons of layoffs in tech, even at those coveted FAANG companies and they are competing for the few openings out there.

The tech market is in a downturn right now and it’s hard to find a job when you’re competing with FAANG engineers. Things will eventually pick up, but as of the current moment, it is NOT easy to get a job in tech even with years of experience.

I’m gonna say only one thing. If you want to make a bank at a job then learn low level programming.

I think OP doesn’t understand what a SWE does and compares it to WP guys.

SWE isn’t just building a website like what WP does.

It includes building complex web applications that can do pretty much everything at scale which is easier to maintain and has a smaller codebase.

With WP and its increasing reliability on external plugins as a project grows it’s not always the best idea to go for.

This is of course for businesses that have 7+ figures in income that have hundreds of thousands of users using the site everyday and the site itself offers some really complex functionality.

Other than that WP is a really good option to start with an e-commerce store. It’s enough if business sells basic products at scale

Hiring full-time SWE became a luxury rather than an essential to early-stage startups.