I'm a coder who has worn a lot of hats, from individual contributor to lead engineer to "CTO" (yes, in quotes, make of that what you will!). I've plenty to learn and hopefully some to share as well.
I've found the reality to be a lot more messy. A lot of the 80% is still there, and there are also new things there. I still have to:
Re-prompt the AI when I don't like the code it generated (which is often)
Review all the code
Review all the code by juniors who now produce 10x as much code for me to review
Still do hands-on coding sometimes especially for building high-level scaffolding
That said, the key point is of course directionally true that AI is changing the composition of the job, and in a way that can make it harder. I've found everyone is expected to multi-task a lot more now, which is exhausting for most people. I've always found there to be a certain zen in quietly writing code line-by-line, and that is, indeed, mostly a thing of the past now. In fact that's always been my favorite part of the job. Not the "interesting problems", but just chilling with coffee, good music, and tapping on my keyboard. I do mourn the loss of that.
"I've always found there to be a certain zen in quietly writing code line-by-line, and that is, indeed, mostly a thing of the past now. In fact that's always been my favorite part of the job."
AI Software Engineer 🚀 | MSc Computer Science | Building scalable cloud & AI systems | Open-source enthusiast | Writing about code, career & the chaos in between
The zen of coffee, music, and just quietly typing I miss that too 😄 And you're right, the 80% didn't disappear. It just got louder. Re-prompting, reviewing, re-prompting again. Different kind of tired
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I've found the reality to be a lot more messy. A lot of the 80% is still there, and there are also new things there. I still have to:
That said, the key point is of course directionally true that AI is changing the composition of the job, and in a way that can make it harder. I've found everyone is expected to multi-task a lot more now, which is exhausting for most people. I've always found there to be a certain zen in quietly writing code line-by-line, and that is, indeed, mostly a thing of the past now. In fact that's always been my favorite part of the job. Not the "interesting problems", but just chilling with coffee, good music, and tapping on my keyboard. I do mourn the loss of that.
"I've always found there to be a certain zen in quietly writing code line-by-line, and that is, indeed, mostly a thing of the past now. In fact that's always been my favorite part of the job."
💙 Mine too.
The zen of coffee, music, and just quietly typing I miss that too 😄 And you're right, the 80% didn't disappear. It just got louder. Re-prompting, reviewing, re-prompting again. Different kind of tired