Prelude
The sky is falling. Or so my LinkedIn feed tells me.
Every day brings a new prophecy. The end of the programmer. The obsolescence of the Product Manager. The death of the creative. We are told that we are standing on the precipice of a jobless future where an algorithmic god writes our code, designs our interfaces, and manages our backlogs. It sounds like the worst children's story I've ever heard. I've probably written worse.
I have spent twenty years building systems. I have seen frameworks rise and fall. I have seen methodologies promised as silver bullets turn into lead weights. And now I see a panic that is less about technology and more about vanity.
The fear that AI will replace you is not based on the capability of the model. It is based on the fragility of your ego.
If your entire professional identity is wrapped up in writing boilerplate code or shuffling Jira tickets, then yes. You should be worried. But if you are a builder? If you are a thinker? This has changed absolutely everything.
We need to talk about the uncomfortable truth. The "replacement" narrative is a myth. But it is a myth that persists because it hides a much scarier reality. You aren't going to be replaced by a robot. You are going to be exposed by one.
The Orthodoxy
Let's look at the standard narrative. The orthodoxy of the tech world right now is a binary panic.
On one side, we have the doom-mongers. They look at tools like Devin or GitHub Copilot and see an extinction event. They argue that because an LLM can generate a React component in seconds, the human who used to write that component is now waste matter. They see the software engineer as a typewriter in the age of the word processor. A relic.
On the other side, we have the defensive egoists. These are the engineers who scoff. "It hallucinates," they say. "It can't understand context." They retreat into a fortress of arrogance. They believe that their "gut feeling" about system architecture is a magical property that silicon can never replicate. They treat AI as a toy. A parlour trick.
Both sides are wrong.
The doom-mongers miss the point of engineering. Engineering is not typing. It is decision making. The defensive egoists miss the point of progress. They are holding onto low-value work because it makes them feel smart.
This binary thinking is killing us. It creates a culture where we are either paralyzed by fear or blinded by hubris.
Recent studies show the panic is real. A massive 74% of IT professionals believe AI will make their skills obsolete. They look at the demos and they see their livelihoods evaporating. They see a future where they are replaced by a prompt. You can read about this fear in 74 Of It Pros See Ai Making Their Skills Obsolete.
Research consistently indicates that AI is not a replacement for human expertise but rather a powerful augmentation tool. See Ai And Job Displacement Myths Vs Facts. The data shows that new technologies create more jobs than they displace. But the nature of those jobs changes.
That is the part nobody wants to hear. The job changes. It gets harder. It gets faster. And it requires you to actually know what you are doing.
The Cracks
I built an agent last week. It was supposed to refactor a legacy Python service. I gave it the repo. I gave it the context. I told it to behave.
It wrote beautiful code. Elegant type hints. Docstrings that would make a librarian weep. It was perfect.
And it was completely wrong.
It had hallucinated a dependency that didn't exist. It had optimized a function that was never called. It had misunderstood the business logic because the business logic was irrational (as business logic always is).
If I were a junior developer who defined my worth by lines of code produced, I would have shipped that. I would have looked at the output, felt the dopamine hit of "done", and deployed it. The system would have crashed.
This is where the cracks in the orthodoxy appear.
The "God Complex" in software engineering is real. We are prone to it. We love to believe we are the architects of the universe. See The God Complex Why Software Engineers Are So Prone To Ego. We think our ability to memorize syntax makes us geniuses.
AI strips that away. It turns out that memorizing the arguments for a kubectl command is not genius. It is trivia. And the robot is better at trivia than you are.
The cracks are visible in the "One-Person Unicorn" myth. The cognitive load of trying to be the PM and the Dev and the Designer is too high. Even with AI assistance the context switching kills you.
You cannot hold the entire system architecture in your head while simultaneously empathizing with the user journey and negotiating with stakeholders. These are different modes of thinking.
When we try to collapse these roles we end up with mediocrity. We get systems that are "good enough" at everything but great at nothing. We get products that have no soul because they were designed by a statistical average.
There is a concept called "Skill Obsolescence." It is accelerating. Half of all current skills might be outdated within two years. But this doesn't mean the job is outdated. It means the toolbelt is changing. You can see the data on this in Half Of All Skills Will Be Outdated Within Two Years Study Suggests.
The cracks are showing in the "Human vs AI" debate. It is not a battle. It is a filter.
The Deeper Truth
The reality is that AI raises the "waterline" of quality.
Imagine a sea of competence. Above the water is value. Below the water is commodity.
For decades, we have been paid handsomely to work below the waterline. We have built careers on writing CRUD apps and configuring Webpack. We have convinced ourselves that this drudgery is "craft".
It isn't. It's plumbing.
AI is flooding the engine room. It is raising that waterline. Everything below it is now automated.
If your value proposition as a developer was "I can write a React component from a mock" you are now underwater. That is a commodity.
If your value proposition as a PM was "I can take notes in a meeting and write a user story" you are now underwater. That is a commodity.
This is the source of the panic. The people screaming the loudest are the ones who were treading water just above the old line. They realize they are about to drown.
But for those who have mastered their craft the rising water is a good thing. It washes away the grime. It eliminates the drudgery.
The Death of Mediocrity
I used to spend 40% of my time writing tests. Not the clever integration tests that catch race conditions. The boring unit tests. The ones that check if a function returns true when you pass it "true".
Now I write a prompt. The AI writes the tests. I review them. I tweak them. I move on.
Does this make me obsolete? No. It makes me dangerous.
It allows me to focus on the architecture. It allows me to think about system resilience. It allows me to spend time on the problem, not the syntax.
The idea that a novice can use AI to perform like an expert is a dangerous myth. A novice using AI just produces garbage faster.
We are seeing a return to the "Renaissance" of craft. Because the "average" is now free. The "average" is automated. So the only value left is the "exceptional."
The unique human capabilities—critical thinking, empathy, creativity—are becoming the currency of the realm. You can read about this shift in How Ai Changes The Meaning Of Expertise A Deep Dive.
The Quality Paradox
I suspect we are entering a period I call the Quality Paradox.
As the cost of generating code and content drops to zero, the volume will explode. We will drown in AI-generated apps, articles, and products. Most of it will be rubbish.
Therefore, the value of curation and expertise skyrockets.
The ability to delete code is now more valuable than the ability to write it. The ability to say "no" is more valuable than the ability to generate "yes".
This is the paradox. The more AI creates, the more human judgement costs.
See The Human Edge In The Age Of Ai Why Expertise Matters More Than Ever. Genuine expertise is the only filter we have left against entropy.
The Indie Agency Era
There is another shift happening. One that excites me more than any LLM benchmark.
The death of the silo.
For years, we have worked in relay teams. Product writes the spec. Design draws the pictures. Engineering writes the code. QA breaks the code. Ops deploys the code.
It is slow. It is inefficient. It is boring.
AI collapses this chain.
A single engineer, armed with the right tools, can now do the work of a small team. A designer can prototype functional code. A PM can query the database directly using natural language.
We are moving towards the "Indie Agency" model of work. Small, multidisciplinary teams of experts who use AI to punch way above their weight. See The Indie Agency Era The Shift Toward Talent First Tech Enabled Creative Work.
The Multidisciplinary Necessity
In this world, "It's not my job" is a resignation letter.
You cannot just be a backend engineer anymore. You need to understand the product. You need to understand the user. You need to understand the business.
Why? Because the AI can handle the specialization. It needs you to provide the integration.
See The Importance Of Interdisciplinary Collaboration In Ai Projects. The complexity of modern systems means we need diverse perspectives. We need the "human in the loop" to be a human who understands the whole loop, not just one segment.
Implications
The implications of this shift are profound for every role in the technology stack. We need to stop looking at our titles as static definitions and start looking at them as evolving platforms for orchestration.
Thread 1: The Product Manager
The Product Manager is not dead. But the "Project Manager" masquerading as a Product Manager is finished.
If your day consists of moving tickets from one column to another you are gone. AI can do that. AI can summarize the standup. AI can write the release notes.
The new PM is a "Builder." They are technical. They understand the materials. They don't just ask for features. They prototype them. They use AI to explore the solution space before they hand it off to engineering.
They are expected to have "AI Fluency." They need to know how to prompt. They need to know the limits of the models. You can see this evolution described in How Ai Is Redefining The Product Managers Role.
But more importantly they need to be the guardians of "Why."
When the cost of building code drops to zero the cost of building the wrong code becomes the primary risk. The PM's job is to reduce that risk.
Thread 2: The Software Engineer
The Software Engineer is not dead. But the "Code Monkey" is finished.
If you take pride in memorizing the arguments for a specific API function you are wasting your time. The AI knows the API better than you.
The new Engineer is a "System Architect." They are responsible for the integrity of the whole. They treat code generated by AI as a raw material. Their job is to refine it. To secure it. To integrate it.
They must move from "Writer" to "Editor."
This is a hard transition. Editors have to be better than the writers they edit.
The engineer must understand the business context. Why are we building this? If the AI generates three ways to solve a problem which one is the most maintainable? Which one scales?
You can read about the shifting definition of skilled work in The End Of Expertise As We Know It How Ai Will Redefine What Being Skilled Means.
Thread 3: The Interaction
This is where the magic happens. The interaction between the PM and the Dev.
In the old world the friction was high. The PM wrote a doc. The Dev read it (maybe). They argued.
In the new world the artifact is shared. The PM brings a working prototype (generated by AI). The Dev tears it apart. They sit together. They co-create.
The "spec" is code. The "code" is a spec.
This requires mutual respect.
The PM must respect that the Dev sees dangers they cannot see. The Dev must respect that the PM sees value they cannot see.
We need to design our teams for this collaboration. We need "collaborative intelligence." See Leveraging Ai To Improve Business Collaboration And Make Teams Smarter.
The most successful teams will be the ones where the PM and the Dev are functionally a single unit. A "dyad" of creativity.
Thread 4: Kill Your Ego
You have to let go of the idea that your value comes from the tasks you do. Your value comes from the outcomes you achieve.
If an AI can write the SQL query faster than you, let it. Don't fight it to prove a point. Use the time you saved to optimize the schema.
See Why Is The IT Industry Saturated With Egotistical Personalities. Our industry is full of people who think they are special because they understand computers. Computers now understand themselves. You are no longer the translator. You are the guide.
The Mental Model
I want to propose a new mental model for the AI-augmented team.
Forget the "Assembly Line." Forget the "Handoff."
Think of it as a "Jam Session."
In a jazz band everyone is a master of their instrument. The drummer doesn't try to play the piano. The pianist doesn't try to play the trumpet.
But they all listen to each other. They react. They build on each other's ideas.
The AI is a new instrument. It is a synthesizer that can sound like anything.
The PM is playing the melody. They set the direction. They define the "feel."
The Engineer is the rhythm section. They provide the structure. They keep the time. They ensure the whole thing doesn't fall apart.
Sometimes the PM takes a solo (generating a prototype). The Engineer supports them.
Sometimes the Engineer takes a solo (optimizing the backend). The PM supports them.
But they are playing the same song.
If the PM stands up and says "I don't need the drummer anymore because this synthesizer has a drum loop" the music dies. It becomes mechanical. It becomes soulless.
The audience (the users) can tell the difference between a loop and a drummer.
We need to respect the drummer. We need to respect the pianist.
We need to respect the craft.
Conclusion
The robot isn't coming for your job. It's coming for your boredom.
It is coming for the hours you spend updating documentation. It is coming for the days you spend writing boilerplate. It is coming for the ego-driven belief that you are a wizard because you can centre a div.
The AI revolution is a mirror. If you look into it and see a replacement, it is because you have made yourself replaceable. You have settled for mediocrity.
But if you look into it and see a lever? A way to build faster, better, and bigger? Then you have nothing to fear.
I am tired of the "End of Work" narrative. It is lazy. It is fearful.
And I am tired of the "I am a God" narrative. It is arrogant. It is foolish.
The reality is that we are all apprentices again. We are all learning how to wield this new fire.
To the Product Managers: Stop trying to fire your engineers. You need them. They are the ones who keep you out of jail. They are the ones who ensure your beautiful vision doesn't crash at 3 AM.
To the Engineers: Stop dismissing your Product Managers. You need them. They are the ones who ensure you aren't building a cathedral in the desert. They are the ones who understand the human heart.
The future belongs to the teams that can integrate AI without losing their humanity.
It belongs to the teams that respect the craft.
The waterline is rising. If you are standing alone you will drown. If you are standing together you will float.
Now if you will excuse me, I'm off to build stuff.