Are software engineering roles disappearing? Not exactly. The apparent decline in job postings might just be a shift in titles—think ‘Generative AI Leader’ instead of ‘Software Engineer’. And now, as if on cue, everyone has become a generative AI expert and leader. Not just Silicon Valley, it’s the same in Bengaluru too.
Vaibhav Kumar, senior director of AI/ML at AdaSci, pointed out this phenomenon in a LinkedIn post. “In Bangalore these days, if you randomly toss a stone, odds are it will land on a Generative AI Leader—earlier, they used to be software engineers, but now they seem to be on the brink of extinction.”
It is true that there are a slew of new jobs that are being created because of generative AI such as AI entrepreneur, chief AI officer, AI ethicist, AI consultant, and at least 50 more. But it has also given rise to people who simply call themselves ‘generative AI leaders’.
Everyone’s an AI Engineer
Kumar’s point is that now everyone is calling themselves an expert in AI as the barrier to entry is significantly lower. But then not everyone can be a good GenAI leader. Vishnu Ramesh, the founder of Subtl.ai, said that the only way to find a good generative AI leader is to ask them how many generative AI projects they have driven and whether these projects actually benefited the organisation.
“The number of chatbots built will soon overtake Bangalore traffic,” Shashank Hegde, data science and ML manager at HP, said in jest, implying that with every company experimenting with generative AI in use cases, most of them are coming up with chatbots on their systems, which, honestly, people are not very fond of.
Ramesh and Hegde’s points found takers. More engineers in the discussion described how their team’s ‘generative AI leaders’ were not able to not perform basic tasks of machine learning, and were mostly experts on data science, not generative AI really. “A Rs499 course from Udemy or Coursera is delivering GenAI leaders very rapidly,” commented Chetan Badhe.
AIM had earlier reported that fancy courses from new organisations are creating jobs for the future, but also causing freshers to search for jobs that are not there in the market. “GenAI leaders don’t know what’s bidirectional in BERT,” added another user.
Meanwhile, a recent IBM study found out that around 49% of Indian CEOs surveyed said they were hiring for GenAI roles that didn’t exist last year. Also, 58% of Indian CEO respondents say they are pushing their organisation to adopt generative AI more quickly than some people are comfortable with.
This makes it clear that generative AI is the leading focus for companies, although for some, it’s more about appearances than substance.
Moreover, getting ‘generative AI’ on your profile can also boost your salary by up to 50%. AIM Research noted that the median salaries of generative AI developers and engineers ranged between INR 11.1 lakh and 12.5 lakh per annum.
It just makes sense to call yourself a generative AI leader if you are already working in the software engineering field. But getting upskilled in the field to be credible is also important.
Bengaluru is All About AI
Just like everyone is “thrilled” on LinkedIn, everyone is doing something in AI in Bengaluru. Someone correctly pointed out: If LinkedIn was a city, it would definitely be Bengaluru. The city’s AI hub, HSR Layout, was recently looking for a chief everything officer, someone who can perform a plethora of tasks all alone.
And it is indeed true that most of the software engineering is becoming all about generative AI because of the trend and hype. Earlier, Bangalore was filled with software engineers from IT industries and startups; now they have slowly turned to generative AI leaders. Some are even influencers on X or LinkedIn.
At the same time, Bengaluru’s AI culture is also giving rise to 10x engineers, who are able to do the task of 10 people using generative AI. Some even argue that there is no need for a computer science degree anymore to get into AI. It is definitely time to rewrite your resume and say you are a ‘generative AI leader’.
