> The industry eventually must evolve to create software assistants capable of running code, triaging bugs, etc.
In my opinion, we had this. They were your senior support staff or were operations; some companies combined this into a formal role called "Support" or "Service" "Operations."
But then we as an industry decided that operations is bad[0] and if you write the code then you can obviously test the code, deploy the code, maintain the code, and support the code. Then every Hip And Cool Start-Up adopted the model of "sysadmins and support staff are bad because we've had bad experiences in the past so we will also have our devs talk directly to customers until they get tired of doing that and we just replace it with a contact form encumbered by CAPTCHA and a no-reply e-mail address."
As someone who has greatly enjoyed, been very good, and very well paid (so my employers agreed that I was good at it), at support and operations roles only to see them disappear into the inky void of Everyone Codes All Of The Time, I am both biased and frustrated.
There are still lots of good support organizations out there, and not every place looks at support as a burden. It's a pretty critical piece in the "new" 'as a service' world, helping folks use complex systems that they don't control, etc.
I've been heavy in the data space, and get to do some fascinating work with folks, helping design data models, implement analysis, and other things in a wide variety of verticals. It's support, so sometimes there's some more tedious things too - there's no avoiding that. :)
But, and perhaps I'm biased, it's still a great career path, even if it's not as flash as "code all the time" work.
I think this is an indictment of the lack of organizational skills in the area of software engineering. It is still an industry run by the sit of their pants. There is no clear separation of responsibilities and everyone wants to do everything (and usually badly).
In my opinion, we had this. They were your senior support staff or were operations; some companies combined this into a formal role called "Support" or "Service" "Operations."
But then we as an industry decided that operations is bad[0] and if you write the code then you can obviously test the code, deploy the code, maintain the code, and support the code. Then every Hip And Cool Start-Up adopted the model of "sysadmins and support staff are bad because we've had bad experiences in the past so we will also have our devs talk directly to customers until they get tired of doing that and we just replace it with a contact form encumbered by CAPTCHA and a no-reply e-mail address."
As someone who has greatly enjoyed, been very good, and very well paid (so my employers agreed that I was good at it), at support and operations roles only to see them disappear into the inky void of Everyone Codes All Of The Time, I am both biased and frustrated.
0 - Because money, I suspect.