The hardest part of a senior software engineer’s job isn’t writing code. Neither communications. Nor even being on-call on Sunday night.

The hardest part is stopping your manager when they are trying to pass off a Figma mockup as a product that’s almost finished.

This is extremely uncomfortable because it creates conflict. The manager and their manager already saw themselves getting promoted for the profits this project will generate. They don’t want to hear that this project costs an arm and a leg.

But if you don’t try to stop your manager (or sales manager, or customer success manager, etc.), then you always find your company promising mathematically impossible deliverables to the Most Important Client. And then your company’s future becomes impossible too.

With the advent of AI in development, this problem is magnified 1000x.

Because now, no manager who wants a promotion, no CEO either, needs to listen to their developers’ demands. They can turn to the overly friendly AI - and look! It has already built a prototype as I was writing this post, even the spinners are spinning, and the buttons are buttoning! It just needs a little bit of touch-up, but surely nothing a fresh graduate can’t do (by using a 20$/month AI for just a bit longer).

I am sure that eventually AI will become smart enough to build and deliver great software. But will all the companies from today, who believe that AI makes their software engineers an unnecessary expense, survive until AI gets better? That I’m not sure about.