From someone who thinks there's too much AI doom right now and is a glass half full optimist: If you are a software engineer reading this and panicking, don't. The author only mentions his codified, stable knowledge like you'd get from a distributed systems O'Reilly book.
There's no mention of the functional elements of a software engineering role - incident response, working with auditors to define and maintain controls for internal services, handling escalated account support & fraud, working on DevEx, selling shovels (MCPing your consumer-facing APIs/services), getting on customer calls to help sell your company's X feature, managing people downwards and upwards.
The piece kinda reads like remorse over sunken costs and attachment of knowledge to personality. If you twiddle your thumbs and stay static in your role, you will be replaced. It's the differentiation that sets employees apart. And attaching yourself to functions instead of knowledge is the only way to stay afloat.
There's no mention of the functional elements of a software engineering role - incident response, working with auditors to define and maintain controls for internal services, handling escalated account support & fraud, working on DevEx, selling shovels (MCPing your consumer-facing APIs/services), getting on customer calls to help sell your company's X feature, managing people downwards and upwards.
The piece kinda reads like remorse over sunken costs and attachment of knowledge to personality. If you twiddle your thumbs and stay static in your role, you will be replaced. It's the differentiation that sets employees apart. And attaching yourself to functions instead of knowledge is the only way to stay afloat.