u/michaelnovati replied ·
I've seen this and it's also a common complaint amongst my ex-Meta community - junior devs relying too much on AI and not understanding the underlying code or concepts.
Some day in the future, maybe not too far off, we'll all be using AI like when calculators replaced pencil and paper
But calculators didn't do that over night. My mom and dad actually met because of a calculator back in the late 1970s. Only the team lead had one.
During this multi-year transition phase, understanding the fundamentals and being a really good problem solving is what companies want first.
If you are a student and haven't strengthened those muscles and have instead just gotten good at prompt engineering, you will struggle to progress in the industry as a SWE.
I asked a poll to hundreds of my former colleagues who are now everywhere from startups to CTO of large companies. 90% of people said they don't look for AI skills in interviews for generalist SWEs and don't plan on it.
I also expect there to be a bifurcation of the title SWE, and a whole class of AI related jobs like promote engineering that will be careers separate from the SWE title. And we'll need a lot of people in those careers.