I just finished a PhD in stats, and before that, studied computer science. I had planned to go back to industry to do software engineering or be a data scientist afterwards.
However, it seems that in the meantime, vibe coding has taken over the software industry and swallowed most data scientist roles. Few open positions, and the ones that do exist are just pushing a button instead of thinking and solving problems. Is this a correct assessment? Should I try to get back in or just find a new career? I am not too keen on staying in academia either.
The main point of software being a hugely profitable field is that its marginal cost is low with huge up-front investment in enginners.
So it 1) creates a natural barrier to entry but 2) is hugely profitable in the long term.
AI breaks the natrual monopoly created by 1). Even though 2) remains, but it is still unclear how newer companies will survive within this largely saturated space.
Even more unfortunately, we don’t really seem to have an industry as profitable as software that remains reasonably unsaturated (maybe computer chips/hardware?). It feels like the economy might be in for a bad time soon, just because it has been riding on waves upon waves of innovation for a couple decades, and all of them are now eatten up by AI.