Vibe coding meets its critics in Alberta Tech's 'What's the point of a software engineer?'
The week's only upload passed 700,000 views in five days, and its comment section filled with plumbers, builders and engineers explaining their own jobs.
Alberta Tech
Story of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
What's the point of a software engineer?
Among the comedy sketch channels close to Alberta Tech in size, only EthanThe Artist and Grayskitz gathered more views over the week, and most of the group, from Joel Iyalla to ShakTV and Hamish & Andy, ran well below their usual pace. Sam Cornforth was the other one running hot.
Alberta Tech, who sums up the channel as tech comedy and AI hot takes, posted a single video, and it went straight at the subject her audience lives in: "What's the point of a software engineer?" It drew more than 370,000 views on its first day and has passed 700,000 since.
The comments suggest the sketch features a founder who thinks AI has made his engineers optional, and viewers are in no hurry to rescue him. The most popular replies predict his hard lessons ahead, and many reach for comparisons from other trades: a building without a structural engineer, a bridge nobody signed off on, a sink held together with electrical tape until a real plumber arrives. Others come at it from inside the industry, joking that the engineer who eventually gets called in will want to rebuild everything from scratch.
The back catalog keeps the same theme going. "Programmer who forgot how to code", posted 18 days ago, is past a million views, and "CEO finds out employees work for money" is closing in on two million. Workplace absurdity in the age of AI has become this channel's home turf. Around 3,000 new subscribers arrived over the week.
Published on Trari
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What viewers say
Oh geez, that founder is about to find out some hard life lessons
@shela404See it on YouTubeI bet you can stand a building up pretty quick without a structural engineer too.
@landonkrygerSee it on YouTubeThe old adage: software engineers cost $1 for copying from stack overflow and $99999 dollars for knowing what to copy
@mgm5164See it on YouTube
6 more comments
I'm a live event technician. Most of what I do could be done by anyone with thumbs.
I earn my money by spotting issues before they become problems@ElectiveFoolSee it on YouTubeI recently "fixed" my kitchen's clogged main sink by tying the spray nozzle on the side of the main faucet. I used electrical tape to hold down the button so the water would come out of that side.
It *was* much cheaper and faster than a plumber would have been. Also, I fully intend to hire a plumber soon@spineo2387See it on YouTubeanyone can build a bridge, but I wouldn't want to cross one that didn't have an engineer's sign off.
@Jack-In-The-CraicSee it on YouTubeI can already hear the answer the engineer that he will hire when things start to crack. “We need to rebuild the entire system from scratch”
@pif5023See it on YouTube"my bad, that GUI was a locally run overlay, and not a part of your actual app. If you want other machines to be able to run your app, you'll need an actual GUI"
~how I imagine vibe coded app launches go.@SanosukeTanakaSee it on YouTubeImportantly, a software engineer is also going to take the half a second it takes them to ask "could I do this without writing anything". I've seen people basically recreate functions of `sed` in a Python script, where the rest of the script is only really setting up the input and output.
@spooglySee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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The videos drawing views on Alberta Tech right now
- Channel
- Alberta Tech
- Subscribers
- 483,000 ▲ 3,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 5,080,868
- Videos published this week
- 1
- Video published
- October 3, 2026
- Video views so far
- 714,762
- Views on its first day
- 372,326
The numbers
Here is how Alberta Tech's week looks in numbers.
💡 Test your knowledge
Stack Overflow, the programming Q&A site viewers joke about, was co-founded in 2008 by Jeff Atwood and which other developer?
Joel Spolsky, known for his blog Joel on Software, co-founded Stack Overflow with Jeff Atwood in 2008.
