(This post was originally published on WhereDesignFlows).
Looking back, when VSCode first integrated Copilot with just a simple "Tab," I held onto a strange kind of pride. I told myself I shouldn't rely on it too much—that knowledge is the power I should protect.
But then, the "Tab" functions just kept getting better. And better. And terrifyingly good.
It started with learning prompt engineering. I began to feel the raw power and the extended possibility of LLMs, tool calling, context engineering, and agents. The resistance I felt is long gone, replaced by pure speed and awe.
Suddenly, I went from manually grinding out logic to building crazily fast unit test cases. I moved from wrestling with syntax to performing incredibly complex Pandas dataframe manipulations and visualisations in seconds. I never looked back.
Now? Upgrading libraries has become just a "small feature" to tick off. Writing detailed, helpful PRs and commit messages is now a 5-second action.
The more I experience this speed, the more thoughts and feelings I have about where we are going.
The "Bloody True" Joke
I started to joke around at work that our real OKR (Objective and Key Result) is to "automate ourselves out of a job."
We laugh about it. It’s hilarious... and it's also bloody true.
I see big tech companies reorganising. I see layoffs. I see open headcounts evaporating. The existential crisis creeps in inevitably, but it’s not the end of the story. It’s a fork in the road.
While everyone talks about job losses and how powerless employees feel, I see entrepreneurship growing super fast. It makes me wonder: Am I automating myself out of a job, or am I automating myself into my real job?
The world has immediately become super noisy. We are surrounded by startups rising, ever-changing tech, endless tutorials, and speechless crazy blossoms of created content. It is a chaotic, contradictory, full-of-opportunity, terrifying mess.
We started with "Prompt. Deploy. Pray." (The chaos of early adoption).
We turned into "Prompt Engineering by Day, Existential Crisis by Night." (The realisation of what is happening).
Now, we "Automate Ourselves Out of a Job." (The loss and the gain at the same time).
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