Is the future of programmers becoming architects? They will specify the architecture for AI, decide on the database to use, communicate between different modules, and design the debugging system. I believe that a completely black-box system is untrustworthy, and allowing AI development to proceed without proper oversight will ultimately lead to chaotic architecture.

This is mainly a question for those of you who are employed somewhere where AI coding is enforced. Do your employers still expect you to be accountable for the code you ship? Or has that part of your job description been altered?

I would personally not be comfortable accepting a job where I'm pushed to maximize my velocity with AI, as that would mean I wouldn't be able to understand the systems I was shipping. The only reason I would think that would be acceptable, is if I did not have personal responsibility for code that breaks, security vulnerabilities, etc.

Anyone with a photocopier could have copied our product. What they couldn’t copy was the trust of students and the media coverage that put 80,000 visitors on our site in a single day.

I think about that hall often now, because software is becoming the photocopier.

AI is turning code into a commodity. The second-order effect few people discuss is what this does to the software talent market.

If code stops being the differentiator, what happens to the premium paid to write it?

Here is what I expect:

→ Demand moves to moats that aren’t code. Proprietary data, distribution, physical operations, trust, regulation. Companies without one face margin compression. Companies with one won’t need a 500-person engineering team to defend it.

→ The compensation premium compresses. For a decade, pay was lifted by cheap capital and the rarity of execution. When execution becomes table stakes, benchmarks recalibrate. Not overnight, and not for everyone, but the direction is clear.

→ The top of the market pays for something different. Not just the best builder of scalable systems, but people who understand unit economics and CAC, who orchestrate AI workflows to do the work of a team, and who choose business leverage over engineering vanity.

I’m 7 months into my third startup. We have no moat yet. Building was never the hard part. Getting the right customer to trust us is.

Code used to be an asset. Pure code is now a commodity.

Distribution is the prize.

If you hire engineers: what do you screen for today that you didn’t two years ago?

Hi everyone,

I have around 4 years of experience as a PHP developer, mainly working with Laravel. Recently, I started learning Java and Spring Boot, and I'm becoming really interested in this technology.

I want to switch my career to Java development and would love to hear from people who have made a similar transition.

How was your experience? What kind of job opportunities did you get, and how difficult was it to land your first Java developer role?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!