Which raises a larger question: Did prompt engineering roles ever truly exist?
All experts interviewed for this piece were skeptical. The market itself was real enough: The North American prompt engineering market was valued at $75.5 million in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 32.8%. But whether that translated into formally titled roles is another matter.
… How can the market be “real enough” if we can’t tell if any jobs actually existed? Maybe I just don’t know enough about economics.
wow so LLMs were just another dangerous anti-labor fad huh
if only this had been completely obvious to anyone who actually reads about how models work since a decade ago
Hiring someone who’s a “prompt engineer” is like hiring someone who says they’re good at googling.
I mean… Being good at Googling is a pretty necessary prerequisite to working in IT. It’s like a sizeable portion of the job.
The majority of people I’ve worked with are dog shit at looking up information. I’d be happy with “good at googling.”
I used to be good at googling. But then Google changed what googling did.
and the tack on reddit trick has fallen to a fraction of it’s former usefulness
“Prompt engineering.” 🤣
“AI” really brings out the goofies, and their even goofier targets lap it up.
Hopefully “vibe coding” will be next.
Today, strong AI prompting is simply an expected skill, not a stand-alone role.
If a company tells me they expect me to be good at writing prompts at least I know I can dodge that bullet and just never ever work there. Nice.
Now AI can write the prompts…
WHY
