Engineer's reflection: software engineering is going away, and the job is now 'director, not builder'
rachittshah · x · 2026-09-23
Varun Srinivasan writes that AI replacing software engineering has shifted from an intellectual expectation to lived reality: the small dopamine rushes of learning languages, tweaking keybindings, and refactoring code are fading. The role is becoming more director than architect or builder, rising rapidly in abstraction. Agents may spew code into files and servers, but building ambitious real-world software is hard in a new way — engineers are now responsible for houses whose floors they've never walked. The longer you worked in the previous world, the harder the transition, but the ceiling on what's possible is far higher now.
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