> Well, not really, because somebody will have to build all those elaborate abstraction layers people will use.
It's almost as though you completely ignored my next sentence, which clarified that great engineers continue to be valued outside of abstraction/infrastructure companies.
Well, I don't find it valid to be frank. They might be valued, but they are valued less and less, and will be valued even less in the future.
An enterprise that used to need 100 engineers, with the cloud, SaaS, PaaS etc, can even today make do with 1/5 of that. Is there any trend showing companies needing MORE software engineers?
I would say yes. More and more stuff is getting done by computer. The majority of IT staff are still building / maintaining in house applications as far as I am aware, not building teh next Facebook / Whatsapp / etc.
It's almost as though you completely ignored my next sentence, which clarified that great engineers continue to be valued outside of abstraction/infrastructure companies.