In an era where AI agents are rapidly transforming the landscape of software development, many engineers find themselves at a crossroads. The question looming large is not whether AI will replace human coders, but how software engineers can evolve to stay relevant and indispensable. As AI takes over routine coding tasks with increasing efficiency, the role of the human engineer is shifting dramatically. This post explores the strategies and skills that will empower software engineers to not just coexist with AI, but to leverage it as a powerful tool in their professional arsenal, ensuring their continued value and success in this new technological paradigm.

I am going to date myself again here. When you needed to find a book at the library back in the day you had to use a card catalog. You needed the name of the author, book, or the subject in order to search. You would find the correct drawer, search through it and hopefully find what you were looking for. The card would provide you an identification number that would tell you which section of the library it was in, and from there you would venture on your quest for knowledge, scanning the bookends for the right sequence of letters and numbers.

When the search engine came out, it was not just about finding the book, you were able to find the passage. If I needed to learn what the difference between a function and a method is in object oriented programming, I could type that in to a search engine and get to the answer fairly quickly, usually with examples.

When I was working search engines, stack overflow, and reddit became my go to tools for solving problems. They cut down the time by a lot, sometimes they created new problems. But my ability to use those tools was what separated me from those that didn’t. How you craft your search query, how to adjust your query based on the results you received, etc. were paramount in productivity and accuracy.

Now you can have AI help you code, sometimes even write the code for your project. I realized I had to learn how to efficiently use AI tools, as I had to learn the card catalog and the search engine.

After speaking to many technologists in my area and online I have come to the conclusion that there are three main camps when it comes to the perceived impact of AI in engineering.

1. The indifferent engineer, “AI can’t even autocorrect my texts, I’m not worried about it taking my job”
2. The fearful engineer, “I don’t know what I’m going to do in a few years, maybe I’ll take up plumbing or become an electrician”
3. The excited engineer, “AI just saved me a weeks worth of work in a few minutes”

I have been through all stages of these and have come to terms with the fact that AI is here to stay, it is good and getting better, and if I do not evolve with it, I will be left behind.

The following are some ideas to consider, I hope these will help those of you that are worried about your future with AI.

1. Master AI-Human Collaboration: The engineer that can communicate, for example with the marketing team or the product manager, is ahead of their peers. In the same way one that can communicate effectively with AI will also get ahead. This includes skills like; prompt engineering, result interpretation, and iterative refinement.

2. Beyond Code: building something with AI is easier than ever and its going to get easier. But building it on your local is not the same as scaling it up to millions of concurrent users. Skills like design and architecture are going to be crucial in scaling a business.

3. Ethical AI Implementations: Topics like bias detection, fairness in AI systems, and ensuring transparency/understanding in AI.

4. From Coder to AI Orchestrator: engineers are going to be orchestrators of AI agents and tools, they will no longer be writing every line of code, instead they will be thinking of how to solve the human problems with the most efficient and scalable solution. This will include things like: managing AI-human workflows, QA in AI assisted coding, and optimizing the development pipeline in an AI-augmented environment.

Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool, it is shifting the way we work. But our creativity and grit separate us from the machines. As we become dependent on these tools we must try to remember our roots and our ability to overcome. What one sees as a threat another may see as opportunity. How we as engineers view AI is going to help you or kill you, but it is not the AI that is in control, it’s you.

Vatché

Tinker, Thinker, AI Builder. Writing helps me formulate my thoughts and opinions on various topics. This blog's focus is AI and emerging tech, but may stray from time to time into philosophy and ethics.