Software engineers don't get to be Luddites about AI
Short summary
Sean Goedecke argues that software engineers have no moral standing to resist AI automation, since the entire profession has always been about automating other people's jobs. He compares engineers opposing AI to the mechanics who built power looms and then complained when their own skills became obsolete.
- Software engineering's core purpose is automating human labor—from spreadsheets displacing bookkeepers to software eliminating video rental stores, travel agencies, and data entry jobs. Engineers can't claim this is suddenly wrong now that it's happening to them.
- The historical parallel to Luddites doesn't work: software engineers are like the mechanics who built the automation machines, not the workers being displaced. Those same mechanics were automated away 50 years later and were seen as hypocrites for resisting it.
- If engineers genuinely believe technological progress is harmful, they should quit. Complaining about AI while continuing to build automation is intellectually dishonest—it's "pulling the ladder up behind you" only after you've climbed it.
Full summary
Sean Goedecke argues that software engineers complaining about AI automation are hypocrites. The entire field of software engineering exists to automate away human labor—VisiCalc displaced bookkeepers, and the industry has systematically eliminated video rental stores, travel agencies, typing pools, data entry jobs, and countless others. Engineers built their careers on the principle that automating work is progress. Now that automation is coming for their own jobs, they're suddenly upset about it. Goedecke sees this as intellectually dishonest: you can't spend decades putting other people out of work and then claim automation is wrong when it reaches your doorstep.
The article reframes the Luddite comparison that's become popular among anxious engineers. The Luddites were textile workers destroyed by automation, but software engineers aren't the textile workers here—they're the mechanics and smiths who *built* the machines that destroyed textile work. Those mechanics faced their own displacement fifty years later when manufacturing improvements let unskilled workers operate the machines instead. Their strike failed partly because they were rightfully seen as hypocrites. The Times called them out for complaining about "inevitable and irresistible laws" they'd spent their careers implementing for everyone else.
Goedecke acknowledges that some people genuinely believe technology is harmful and progress is a myth. But he points out that software engineers, through their work, have consistently voted for technological progress regardless of what they claim to believe. If engineers think automation is actually wrong, they should quit. If they stay, they lose the moral standing to complain. Turning against AI specifically—at the moment it threatens their own industry—is undignified and unconvincing after decades of building the automation machine.