I'm Making Myself Replaceable
AI Doesn't Need to Get Smarter. We Just Need to Get Dumber.
I never seriously considered that AI could replace engineering jobs until now.
So what changed?
Not a breakthrough model.
Not some hyped-up coding agent.
Something quieter: I slowly stopped thinking.
I use AI at work for most things now. Sometimes it surfaces forgotten APIs or draws parallels in existing codebases you’ve never thought about.
Does it need handholding? Yes.
Would I trust it to code a self-driving car and then climb in blindfolded? No.
But this doesn’t mean it can’t do a ton of stuff very well, and that you should dismiss it.
So why do I think it could cost some engineering jobs?
Programming was a hobby for me back then.
I found joy in reading a source, even in languages I didn’t know. I think this drive to understand things contributed to my engineering career a lot.
But the other day I caught myself doing this:
Currently in development mode, when user queries are created, no usage items are generated. The usage_item table is empty. However, I do see entries in the usage table. Why is that?Cursor swept through the code and gave me a beautifully generated markdown document, exactly telling me what’s happening.
Me, on the other hand?
I was stripped of the chance to explore a codebase that’s new to me, to find workarounds I could fix later, to see interesting solutions that might spark new ideas for future code.
I was stripped of the very experiences that made me a better engineer.
If we keep delegating to AI everything that turned us into good professionals, coding agents don’t have to outsmart us; we simply need to fall to their level.
Give a minute of thought to what made you a better engineer and see if you are outsourcing the thinking.
Until next time,
Akos
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Thanks for the shoutout, Akos. I had just finished writing the post I'm publishing tomorrow, and I had arrived at the same conclusion.
My comparison is more with smartphones, social media, and the ways of communicating we have right now. We thought that was a productivity boost, but it was a distraction. Instead of doing something meaningful, we created more noise with that communication.
With AI, I think we are going in the same direction. Instead of doing some meaningful code, if we prompt and stop thinking, we're just going to spend more time and deliver less work
I genuinely believe it can go two ways: you could offboard all your thinking to the LLM, or you could explore new things you’ve always wanted to try but never knew where to begin.