On a more serious note I do expect the software developer market to change radically in the next five years. My hope is that it leads to companies exploring more avenues for products and services. My fear is that it will become a cost cutting race to the bottom.
We're all using AI assistants and they've had a positive impact in productivity. They can't currently do our job and we have so much technical debt that firing people because of this would just keep things as they are or get worse.
As far as the bulk of the IT industry goes (non-FAANG), I think it's fairly predictable: more job cuts due to perceived AI advantages but in the end quality of service/product will probably be lower for a decade or so. Jobs easily automated will be gone (that 200-people call center will become 25 people).
Exactly how it happened when companies went crazy with offshore outsourcing.
That probably means AI stuff. AI is already doing a good chunk of my work. You can take photos of a crash stacktrace and it identifies the solution far better and more comprehensively than Stack Overflow. I write fiction and AI closes a story iteration loop in seconds, something that may otherwise take hours or days.
We've expressed concerns that this is "anti-growth" and I agree. But the way I see it, it's like driving cars vs riding horses. You may end up a better car driver and a worse horse rider, and it will matter in the initial years of transition.
But eventually we all drive cars. It is sad what happens to all those millions of horses, but such is tech.