From Craftsmen to Operators: The rapid evolution of Software Engineer's role

As long as I can remember, I've loved writing code and tinkering with solutions to technical challenges. I’ve been in the industry for about 15 years now, and I still get a smile on my face when I think about the hard problems I used to solve. What's obvious is that this feeling is getting rarer, and the best way to explain it is that we're turning from artisans and artists to assembly line workers.

The internet is flooded with content showcasing the "success" of the latest Coding Agents and LLMs. Claims like "I built this with Opus in an hour" or "Codex built an entire browser during a weekend" have become commonplace. I'm not here to deny these claims, nor argue for them. I use them myself and witness firsthand how powerful they are.

What's rarely discussed is how these changes make me, and probably many others, feel. The job I once enjoyed doing, tackling complex technical challenges (yes, code is just a part of it), is now becoming more and more repetitive and monotonous.

Type your prompt, hit Enter, spawn another agent, repeat. Wait for the code to be generated, use another agent to review it, then quickly review it myself and submit it for review. Rinse and repeat.

What once was an art, a craft, is now becoming an assembly line. And there's a massive difference between crafting and assembling. These AI agents are slowly turning us from skilled craftspeople into line workers. With each day passing I feel this more and more.

It took most of the joy away from the job I do day to day. I don't feel like I'm building something anymore, I'm just instructing someone (an AI Agent) to do it. As if I hired a freelancer and said: "Hey, build this for me for $20". And then there's the back and forth communication with the freelancer (agent), pointing out the issues and asking for changes. You never quite get what you envisioned, so you iterate, adjust, compromise. The end result works, but it doesn't feel like yours. We've lost the experience of solving the actual problems ourselves. I cannot predict what the future will bring, but extrapolating the changes in the last 3 years (since ChatGPT was publicly released), it's clear it's going to change a lot very quickly.

There seem to be two camps of people regarding this: those who enjoy the process of solving problems, writing code and tackling complex technical challenges, and those who love delivering values/solutions, having happy customers and a polished (on the outside) product. If you're in the latter camp, you're enjoying the current state of things—you can build things on your own quicker than ever before.

But this may change as well in the future. As the agents become more capable, everyone will become capable of building things on their own with a single prompt. The competitive advantage of being able to "vibe code" will disappear when everyone can do it.

The work we do as software engineers has changed with AI. Writing code is becoming insanely cheap, and we're left being reviewers and hand holders (for now), the least enjoyable parts of being a software engineer. Deep within, it makes me sad. Deep within, it makes me sad. I'll adapt because I have to. But if you're reading this and feeling the same way—you're not alone. And I wonder: what will we become when the last bit of our craft is automated away?