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Software engineers are facing an 'identity crisis bordering on depression,' Menlo Ventures partner says
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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Anybody who has worked through the life-cycle of large projects knows that as time passes and the software gets adjusted and expanded, code just accumulates problem and brittleness - especially because multiple different people change it and they tend to each do it their way, often without full understanding of the code base - not just at the code level but also at the software design level - and eventually that code gets so hard to change or fix that a whole new system has to be built from the ground up.
In my experience this happens maybe at around 5 - 8 years of age of a codebase.
So I expect we're headed for a spectacular industry-wide explosion because using AI code vastly accelerates this because for just about anything but small projects that can entirelly be generated in one go, AI isn't consistent in coding style, much less software design.
Throwing software engineers at it right now only works if they end up spending even more time reviewing and ajusting the AI code than they would if they did the work themselves, since having AI coding is pretty much the equivalent of outsourcing to a pool of random junior developers.
I wonder how many engineers they’ll have to pull out of retirement in a few years to fix a lot flawed logic.
I remember back in the day when they had to pull Cobol programmers out of retirement to update mainframe software because of Year 2000 and they got paid a bundle for it.
Similar thing for customization of older SAP systems after SAP changed the language used to Java but those systems were still done in the old language.
So I expect that freelance senior designer-developers are going to get paid A LOT of money to come fix things in a few years' time, especially since in places with high AI adoption this is going to be way bigger in terms of size, complexity and seniority of expertise needed that either mainframe code updating for Y2K and updating customizations in old SAP systems.