I had a re-think about my project ideas. Previously I was trying to become a full-stack developer in an attempt to remain employed as a software developer.
I thought that if I knew front-end and back-end code then I would be alright. The truth is that, of course, you cannot compete with AI on that front.
The only way to survive the coming AIpocalypse will be to embrace AI entirely. Lean in to having AI do a lot of the coding for you.
It was always strange to me that people who work in software but are not developers would say things like “haha you will all have coded yourselves out of a job!” with that condescending little sneer that is so fundamental to management. Somehow they had convinced themselves that it was the developers themselves who would be out of a job, and not the people who spend all week in meetings and making no decisions except to have another meeting, or the people whose entire purpose is to move tickets about on a board and report meaningless statistics back to others whose role is to respond to those meaningless statistics with irrelevant comments.
Or the Business Analysts that create a blank ticket with that title “Feature X” and ask the developers to fill in the details of what is required to develop the feature, including what the feature does.
Or the testers that do not understand the product they are testing, that ask a limitless stream of questions about what the behaviour is in all combinations of scenarios, that cannot write automated tests, cannot set up their own test environment, that cannot write a test to create, consume, and remove their own test data.
Or the UX designers that cannot save a PDF, that use the same Miro board for every single design, that create the worst looking applications littered with spelling mistakes and copy-paste errors.
Yes, these are the roles that will hold fast in the face of AI. There is no replacing human incompetence.
Evolving with AI
My latest plan is to utilise AI as much as possible in my current role as a SENIOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER1 to increase my productivity by 3000%.
Like everybody else I’ve gotten into Claude Code as it seems to best for coding stuff right now. The idea is that I can run a bunch of sub-agents to do all the little boring roles that I currently have to do, or deal with other humans to do. I am pretty sure I can get AI to act as the business analyst, the project managers, the testers etc.
Maybe I’ll still have a go at the whole infrastructure side of things too, but may just leave the traditional software developer role in the past where it has already been consigned.
10th August 2025
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Nonsense titles for nonsense companies ↩︎