Those jobs are as good as loost already. There's no endgame where knowledge workers keep knowledge working they way they have been knowledge working. Adapt or be a loosing looser forever.
Nicholson entered the mantrap and the double doors closed behind him. He emptied his pockets and disrobed before donning the clean suit that had been provided to him by the orderlies. The camera watching him appeared satisfied that he was properly prepared and, more to the point, that the vendor was properly protected. The doors to the inner chamber opened and he proceeded into the hallway. He passed several doors until he reached the one that was labeled with the name of the vendor. He pressed the button on the doorframe. A satisfying tactile click, a spinning light illuminating around the button, a click, and then the door opened soundlessly. A single desk with a small chair and a computer terminal awaited him. He sat down and the screen turned on automatically. Finally, he was able to set about classifying his expenses from a recent trip to Tokyo. It was inconvenient, but a small price to pay to ensure that the vendor’s unique interfaces, their intellectual property, couldn’t be copied by the replication machines. Their eyes and their ears were everywhere in the outside world. Simply by seeing your software, these machines could copy its essence. The risks of operating software in the wild required that proprietary software be protected. Hidden away from eavesdroppers. Such was the world in 2037.
Look on the bright side, you've lived to see 2026 where these four things have collapsed into each other. Like a rainbow refracted into pure white light.
Everything you are describing sounds like the phenomenon of government in the United States. If we replace a human powered bureaucracy with a technofeudalist dystopia it will feel the same, only faster.
We are upgrading the gears that turn the grist mill. Stupid, incoherent, faster.
This sounds in line with big law and big finance. Those are exactly the type of people who have flooded into tech over the last decade. It shouldn’t be surprising that compensation structures mirror those industries.
It usually takes government to tie people up in these sorts of knots. These people have enthusiastically done it to themselves. Resume driven development is a hell of a drug.
I agree with you, lots and lots of software definitely has the properties of an asset. There’s also plenty of software that’s hastily written, untested, and basically not fit for use beyond a short expiration date. More like a jug of milk with a shelf life than a fine grand piano with resale value.
The average roof has a lifespan at least an order of magnitude greater than a k8s cluster. Most roofs being put on today will outlast k8s itself.
Software is a liability, not an asset. Treating the construction and maintenance of this horrible liability knows as “code” is a complete misunderstanding of what software actual is.
People who remove books from libraries are scared pitiful people.
People who claim that removing some books from a library is akin to banning or will have any affect on the actual dissemination of knowledge are fools at best and liars almost surely.
Education is like everything else. If you believe it is someone or something else’s responsibility, you won’t have much of it.