There is no way that software will soon reduce the need to engineers.
One way to look at it is AWS for example. It removed the need for hardware and sysadmin skills. But the cost of this is that now instead of sysadmins you need devops and probably in bigger numbers.
The way I see it software crates problems at a higher rate than it solves them, hence the need to constantly change and evolve technologies,so that at least of the technical debt created can be written off.
One way to look at it is AWS for example. It removed the need for hardware and sysadmin skills. But the cost of this is that now instead of sysadmins you need devops and probably in bigger numbers.
The way I see it software crates problems at a higher rate than it solves them, hence the need to constantly change and evolve technologies,so that at least of the technical debt created can be written off.