Some observations about the "total" automation of software engineering: 1. There are more software engineers now than in 2025, and demand is growing. 2. Software engineers have never worked harder than they do now. 3. They largely don't write code anymore, agents write ~100% of the code. 4. The bottom line of the companies that employs these engineers and agents (i.e. the terminal purpose of all this code) is typically not budging as a result of AI adoption. This is why you have to think in terms of systems. Automating one aspect of a system creates its own friction and moves the bottlenecks elsewhere.