It used to be hard

I am 25 but as someone who came into this field very passionate and competent, this was my initial reaction and it sat uncomfortably with me for many months. I still have nostalgia (mainly from a younger age). On work feeling more honest, I think this is a result of an institutional attack on software engineering rather than a new reality of these tools. Like what happens to many other labor forces in history as you mention with artisan cobblers. In some ways it is a consequence of technology but it definitely also weaponized to hurt labor and consolidate power.

In the case of AI-assisted coding, this manifests in a culture of distrust and disrespect toward engineers, both from the bottom-up and top-down. Managers will devalue their engineers by using AI to bypass them. Peers and reports will use AI to exaggerate progress in lockstep with management. No is no longer an easy vocabulary choice when dealing with power because previously technical prowess was definitive, now it can be made “advisory”. I think this is very wrong and stupid but the market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent or something like that.

I still think it is though, that technical knowledge is still supreme. Maybe this is a cope but I find AI tooling very empowering (minus the walled garden nature of it which can be mitigated through local usage but this is problematic in its own regard). Management, pundits, and tech CEOs can frame it however they want but I feel more technically capable than at any point of my technology journey. Not at work, not in academia, but objectively from me knowing myself. We can do more in less time if we know what to do.

He's introduced several 100,000s LoC changes and additions in 10-15 codebases. There are some repos that only he works in ( so no PRs, just merge to master and be done ). He also has self-approved and merged changes without review (he's an admin)

Anyway, now he put in his notice and no one on his team knows how any of this works. We can't get code changes without CICD passing. CICD breaks all the time. The original contractor who made the CICD before him wants nothing to do with it now. We can't generate signed OTA packages.

He went from doing 'too much to finish anything' to 'made so many changes that he had to bypass PRs'.

Now he's leaving.

Engineers have been pointing out this bottleneck for the past year or so. The engineering managers aren't pushing it and the business owners either don't understand or don't care

I guess the most annoying part to me is the expectation of producing a multiple of the output in the same time, when what I really enjoy is the process of slowly making things.

> I still think it is though, that technical knowledge is still supreme.

Ultimately, the ability to get results is what matters most. I've seen quite a few AI maximalists who have Claude mass-produce a bunch of things that nobody needs and then have something running on autopilot that doesn't need to be running in the first place.

- Volume. Kill the backlog! 8 agents in terminals, frantically!

- Ambition. Do the things you always want to do! You have the power!

- Clarity. Oh god I have to figure out what to do next.

That last one is honestly super-hard, but it's also the most valuable. Like, do you want to wake up every day and find new work, because you understand the machine better than everybody else? I know a bunch of people that love that stuff, but also a bunch that don't. I totally get that the transition is hard.

https://tern.sh/blog/volume-ambition-clarity/

I've often heard of house painting as an example of this. It used to take a crew of 8 with buckets, paintbrushes, and ladders to repaint a house. Then paint rollers came along and it got easier. Then sprayers came along and it got even easier. Costs fell, so now people want their houses painted far more often. Landlords now nearly always fully repaint apartments between tenants. As cost fell, painting demand rose.