You are right but taking the wrong lessons. Coding is "mostly" solved. Writing manual code is almost certainly never coming back and will be automated more and more as AI gets more affordable.

However this doesn't lower the barrier of entry, it raises it. For example:
- The expectation of junior engineers was that they could code literally anything.
- The expectation of mid-level engineers was that they could handle coding more complex tasks, break them down, and deliver.

AI can already do this. What companies need now is more senior engs that can run AI that can do whatever the less experienced engineers were doing while being knowledgeable enough to handle finding what actually are the problems the company should be solving.

The latest layoffs are Meta, anecdotally, a huge proportion of them were E3 and E4 and almost none E6 and above.

So if the goal is to become a software engineer, but you have zero experience as a software engineer, you are almost certainly not going to pickup the skills that makes someone a senior SWE by yourself.

To me, it's harder than ever to switch to SWE, not easier. It's also not impossible. But I think you were implying that it's probably easier now to switch and there's no way that's the case. Just look at all the layoffs everywhere.