In 1900 40 Of Americans Worked On Farms

In 1900, 40% of Americans worked on farms. No one was predicting "software engineer" as a career path. The "cloud engineer" title didn't appear until the 2010s.

Today, under 2% are farmers. And there's all this noise about how AI is the death of the software engineer.

But think about what happens when building software gets 5-10x cheaper.

More software gets built. Problems that weren't economically viable to solve start getting solved. Companies that couldn't afford custom tooling suddenly can. 

Entire categories of applications that don't exist yet become feasible.

Right now, many businesses run on spreadsheets and a prayer. Many processes that could be automated aren't. And problems that could benefit from software still don't have software because it used to be too expensive to build.

That changes when the cost drops.

The disruption isn't "fewer humans needed." It's "current skills applied to current tasks will cost less." This is a shift that requires adaptation.

Every productivity leap feels like "this time is different" in the moment. Yet we consistently fail to predict where labor goes next because the new applications are things we aren't imagining yet.

I don't know exactly what job categories emerge when cognitive work gets cheap. No one does.

But the question isn't whether there will be work. It's whether you'll be ready for it.

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