AI is the great leveller

AI is the great leveller.

Junior engineers are starting to produce work approaching senior engineers, and it’s becoming difficult to tell which engineer produced what code.

That’s a daunting moment for a senior engineer, trying to protect the things that differentiated them and made them successful.

But senior engineers still understand the key reasoning behind the code - the why - and in large, complex enterprise systems this can often be more important than the what.

Solving complex problems with code as a differentiator seems to be slipping away. I’ve already had senior engineers coming to me saying, “I don’t want to be writing code in five years’ time.” Really, I think what they mean is: “I don’t want to have to start learning again.”

I feel their pain. Everybody is on their own journey with AI. But I have always loved change. I liken this to the early days of the internet.

For some, change is not welcome, and they want things to be stable. But for me, this is an exhilarating moment.

My advice is the same as it has always been throughout my career: stay curious.

Stay curious.

When you feel you’ve attained mastery of your language or platform is when you are most vulnerable - when you have too much to lose.

We must always continue to adapt and grow, because we never know what could be around the corner.