We Are Using AI to Replace Engineers
Not so much to empower them
Let’s be honest.
AI coding assistants aren’t being used to boost engineering creativity or free up time for deeper thinking. They’re being used to cut costs and ship faster. Companies say they want better quality and empowered engineers. But what is the actual incentive?
Smaller teams, tighter budgets, faster output.
It’s not a revolution in craftsmanship. It’s a spreadsheet win.
I’ve been building software and leading teams for close to two decades. I’ve seen multiple innovation waves hit the industry, including mobile, cloud, agile, DevOps, and now AI. Each wave promised to unlock engineering excellence.
But what’s happening today feels different. It’s not just a tool evolution, it’s a cultural shift. And not necessarily in a good way.
The saved time by using AI tools isn’t going into better system design or more thoughtful solutioning. It’s going into tighter deadlines, leaner teams, and a pressure cooker of “do more with less”.
And yes, I understand where companies are coming from.
Over time, companies accumulated a lot of fat, i.e., excessive headcount. Hiring more was seen as a sign of growth. COVID-19 pushed companies to overestimate their product usage by people, and they hired a large number of employees with very high salaries. The growth fizzled away as the covid restrictions were reduced, and people preferred offline modes.
Hence, the correction was inevitable. Companies are trying to be lean without looking like profit-focused monsters. AI is the perfect cover to reduce cost while maintaining output and the company’s public image.
But let’s not pretend this is about enabling craftsmanship or empowering engineers. That’s lip service. The underlying goal is to maximise organisational efficiency and profit, not to promote developers’ long-term growth.
And that’s exactly why this concerns me not just as an engineer, but also as someone who has built teams and watched people grow.
These new-age developers will find themselves lacking ideas when they grow up and will have nothing to show as senior developers. People coming in fresh from college can do the exact same as these future senior developers who have spent 5 to 10 years in the software industry.
On the other hand, people are proudly claiming on LinkedIn and Twitter that they can code with the help of AI, without knowing how to code. Product managers and non-tech people leaders are excitedly sharing how they’ve built apps using AI tools, without ever learning the fundamentals.
And that’s great for them. I’m genuinely happy to see more people getting into coding and developing software.
I’m not worried about the non-coder vibe programmers in particular. I’m concerned about the impact all this has on the next generations of developers.
Because here’s what I see happening under the surface:
Instead of viewing AI coding assistants as assistants, developers are going to use it as the end-all of software development.
And when that happens, depth takes a backseat. Given an easy path, most people will take it to do their work and will not pay attention to how to better utilise the time saved.
The result?
Developers, five or ten years into the job, will find they have nothing to show for their experience. No problem-solving edge. No architectural thinking. No ability to debug a complex system. Because the tools did all the heavy lifting, and they were never pushed to think deeply.
If we continue down this path, we won’t have senior developers in a decade. We’ll have prompt engineers who know how to coax AI tools but lack the expertise to build resilient systems from scratch.
However, the smarter approach isn’t to reject AI. It’s to reposition it.
While companies are pushing for AI usage, let AI remove the monotonous effort required to do the busy work. Let it assist. But as a developer, use the saved time to:
- Go deeper into architecture
- Mentor younger engineers
- Collaborate better with business
- Improve system thinking
Because the only way to build sustainable engineering excellence is through depth, not just speed of delivery.
Otherwise, we’ll end up with developers who’ve coded for a decade but never really learned how to build.
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