Writing code was never 100% of the job. The hard part of software engineering is understanding the problem and figuring out the most elegant path to solve it. If AI can do the code-writing part faster, then it’s a good tool to use.
I still spend a third of my week in meetings. I put out on-call fires late at night.
I also spend a good chunk of my time interviewing potential hires. I pretty much expect them to use AI for their code assignments. Including prompt history is a plus if they do. What I do gauge is their ability to explain their code, defend the decisions and know how to adapt to changing circumstances.
I know how to get to this point by starting a couple of decades ago. I do recognise that I don’t have the same grasp of our codebase as if I had written it by hand. I do review everything that gets deployed, but the volume is higher and it doesn’t stick as well.
I don’t know how to get in as a jr today. We’ll know in a few years how it’s done. It’s a new landscape, but if you’re passionate about the field you’ll figure it out.
I’m a team lead. I have an engineering manager above me. He expects my team to be autonomous. He’s involved in quarterly planning, but otherwise I really just reach out to clarify what’s expected of my team.
As for my team. I expect the team members to be autonomous. We sync every other day. We share what we’re working on - not so much for micromanaging but to make sure we reach out for help if we’re stuck instead of wasting time silently. Its also for knowledge-sharing. It makes it easier to pick up Bob’s projects when he suddenly quits without warning. And others can learn to avoid his mistakes.
Currently we’ve got too much work that there’s no downtime for any major learning on the clock. My previous job had subscriptions to online learning platforms and I had quarterly goals to complete at least one.