The days of the lone software engineer may soon be history.
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Software engineers are among the most prized talent at any tech company, so why are they suddenly one of the most vulnerable species of the AI boom?On a recent episode of "The Pragmatic Engineer," famed software engineer Kent Beck gave a pretty blunt answer: "We're kind of assholes, sometimes."Software engineers, no matter their level of technical expertise, tend to lack some of the softer skills that are prized in the workplace, he said."We don't necessarily have good emotional regulation skills. We don't have natural empathy," he said. "We're oftentimes more direct than other people can easily handle." Those, at least, are some of the more "hideous" qualities of a typical software engineer, he said.As AI changes everything, those softer skills can now make or break a technical career.As AI writes more code, companies are asking engineers to review, direct, and manage AI-generated work rather than produce every line themselves. Vibecoding is now a commonplace practice in the software industry, enabling seasoned coders to build prototypes more quickly and non-coders to turn their ideas into pilots.It is also blurring the line between engineering and product work. Anthropic's head of growth, Amol Avasare, told Business Insider that engineers using tools like Claude Code are seeing their productivity increase by two to three times, putting new pressure on product managers and designers.
