Titles in this sector have got a bit crazy. We've acquired the terms “builder”, “system thinker”, “AI orchestrator”, “product engineer”, and a few others, all referring to the same shoddy word. Over the course of a few years, we've got caught up in “builder”, “system thinker”, “AI orchestrator”, “product engineer”, and a few other unglamorous words in the same ballpark, and the actual day-to-day work beneath these umbrella terms seems to be coalescing more than ever. That, in itself, is what's really weird about me. As the work itself begins to look increasingly alike across companies, the labels are multiplying at just the right time.
Quite simply, the same name, a very different role.In simple terms, the same name, a very different role.
Go to two people who both say that they are “software engineers”. One of these spends a lot of a normal week reviewing pull requests from an AI agent, writing specs so precise that the agent doesn't go astray, and only intervening when there is some architectural judgment that can best be handled by a human. The other is working most of an average week using a hacked-together piece of code, only autofilling a bit with an AI tool because their company's has been too long or too sensitive to leave in an agent's hands. Business card same title. Not much in common on a Tuesday afternoon.
Now flip it around. You might have two people with the titles "AI orchestrator" and "developer" who are essentially doing the same job: writing specs, reading the generated output, and making the same judgment calls about what to accept or reject. One of these works somewhere that changed the job title to make it more interesting for a hiring page.
Or take the third scenario – this one may be the weirdest of all: two people with the same role, the same company, the same team, and the same views on the tools – it is that different. One engineer handles all the planning and scaffolding, most of the testing, and spends the day reviewing and steering. Because there's a teammate next to them who has the same title, same manager, same sprint board and that teammate doesn't trust the agent's judgement about anything that involves a part of the system that he or she cares about, the teammate by his side, who has the same title and the same manager and the same sprint board, writes most of their code by hand. There were no special assignments for them. They simply slipped into various interpretations of the same character, and both are correct.
Explain the reasons behind this happening now and not at another time.
This is not just a case of title inflation, but a reflection of what’s actually on the job – the job description is changing faster than the words used. HR job descriptions are rewritten every year, industry surveys are done, lists of "top skills for 2026" are compiled, and all that type of language is written and rewritten every year. The work is in constant flux, changing every few months. What you have is a huge disconnect between the label on the job and the experiences in the job, and people take different approaches based on the most recent reading they did, whether it's a conference talk or a LinkedIn post. No one is lying; they just don't have the right vocabulary for something that isn't settled yet.
It's likely that this one will pass in a year or two when the dust settles, and once or twice, everyone just gave up on trying to figure it out, like with full-stack developer. We're in the messy middle right now; given the title of this blog, you'd think you know very little about what these guys do all day, which is why hiring, job-hunting, and even talking to another developer at a meetup becomes weirdly difficult.
Let me know your true mismatch
Here's what I want you to do: leave your polished LinkedIn profile behind. What exactly was your position, and what did you spend most of your hours on this week? If I had to wager real cash, I would say all the way up to a good part of y'all reading this, those two answers don't even have a thing in common. Perhaps you're an engineer, and the vast majority of your week was spent on spec writing and review. Perhaps the title included "AI," and your week resembled the old way of life you were developing five years ago. I feel like it's going to be funnier and more exposing than either of us would expect, at least in the comments, which are the gap between the two.
After all, isn't it a bit silly that, in a field this focused on accuracy, we can't even get a consensus on what we all do every day?
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