I've been hearing this for fifteen years now, which is about as long as I've been paying attention. For the first five years I was maybe even a little concerned. (In the nineties programmers were going to become obsolete because OOP worked and all code was about to become highly reusable so there wouldn't be any need to write new code. Yes, people were saying this in earnest.)
I hear you, I don't think the change is being wrought by any magic bullet where programs write themselves, what I'm seeing is that more folks are going into programming than durable programming jobs are being created. (I use the word durable because there are lots of short term requirements.)
So this is how I look at the health of the market:
1) Does any programmer have their choice of jobs? (which is to say bargaining power when changing jobs)
2) What is the median unemployment time for programmers?
3) How are the first two mediated by contract vs full time work?
4) What are the median salaries?
What I've been seeing since the more recent depression is that unemployment median is staying fairly low but that is being achieved by an increase in the number of folks doing contracting work. Full time work (and that includes health benefits which become significantly more expensive for the 'over 50' programmer as a contractor) is getting harder to find.
As with most markets it is more clear on the 'mediocre' programmers (where mediocre is a function of code productivity) Another thing I'm seeing is salary erosion, which is to say that engineers taking lower salaries at large companies to stay employed. That also indicates a switch in the 'bargaining power' of companies looking for programmers vs the available programmers.
The sequence I've seen a number of times now with acquaintances are flat to negative salary growth when leaving one job and moving to the next. Some folks spent a year or two consulting looking for that position that would be a net gain on their salary growth.
From an economist's point of view if prices are flat to trending down it signals a shift in power from the seller to the buyer.
Those are the signs I'm seeing, would love to hear other's experiences on whether or not they think the market is saturating or not.
I've been hearing this for fifteen years now, which is about as long as I've been paying attention. For the first five years I was maybe even a little concerned. (In the nineties programmers were going to become obsolete because OOP worked and all code was about to become highly reusable so there wouldn't be any need to write new code. Yes, people were saying this in earnest.)