If I was going through university right now I'd want to double-major in computer science and something else.
I see two issues with this however, which probably need to be addressed somehow:
- 1 is that, similar to tech, the positions may be seen as cush/low-effort... Like they did half the real work and are going to phone in the rest with LLMs. (Maybe this is already an existential problem, idk.)
- 2 is that domain knowledge is still difficult to aquire... (which may affect whether this manifests, not necessarily that older engineers like myself can jump in)
Nevertheless, if the pattern of dual expertise were to become common, it could open up a lot of opportunities, and is a positive vision of the future, which I think we pretty desperately need.
Domain expertise is good, but coupled with software knowledge is almost a superpower, when it comes to software projects.
I have seen projects that took 6 months when done by 1 expert + 1 engineer taking mere weeks when done by a single person who were good at both, in a competitor.