I have been a director of engineering for a bit over three years now, and I still hear and read what I call the "old rules" repeated over and over: a director should not spend time coding, good work takes time, protect the team from the business, get consensus before
The Death of Software Development
The job of software developer is dead. You might still be coding, but the profession as you knew it is gone.
Engineering managers have a new job description
Why engineering managers are expected to be hands-on again and how AI tools are making it possible to stay technically sharp while still leading.
Declaring Systems Bankruptcy
For years and years, I’ve helped teams evaluate their systems, fix their systems, tweak their systems, and evolve their systems. And sometimes it’s even been necessary to help teams declare bankruptcy on their systems, blow them up, and start anew. And now it’s my turn. It started as a slow re
You’re Not Taking On Enough Tech Debt
TL;DR - The cost of servicing technical debt is plummeting because of LLMs; assuming coding models keep improving. You're better off taking more technical de...
Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It
In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they’re doing is deeply, deeply weird.
Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It
In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they’re doing is deeply, deeply weird.
Engineers do get promoted for writing simple code
It’s a popular joke among software engineers that writing overcomplicated, unmaintainable code is a pathway to job security. After all, if you’re the only person who can work on a system, they can’t fire you. There’s a related take that “nobody gets promoted for simplicity”: in other words, engineers who deliver overcomplicated crap will be promoted, because their work looks more impressive to non-technical managers.
Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It - …
archived 16 Mar 2026 15:14:04 UTC
Running an AI-native engineering org | Claude
How the Claude Code engineering team’s processes and structure changed once agentic coding became the default way of working.
Software engineering under the spotlight
Think of a tech company as a giant, dimly-lit factory. Work goes on throughout the factory as components shuffle back and forth, and finished products get steadily carted away, but the coordination and efficiency of each section is fairly low. Some parts of the factory get jammed up and don’t do anything for days. Other parts are manically producing broken components which are thrown away unused. However, the factory manager - i.e. the tech company CEO - has one tool to combat this problem. That tool is the spotlight.
Coding Is Dead, Long Live Programming — Ian Cooper - Staccato Signals
Summary In this post, we argue that the role of a coder now belongs to a coding agent, but that the distinct role of a programmer define...
Code Is Cheap Now. Software Isn’t.
The barrier to entry for building software has collapsed. The barrier to building something that matters hasn’t moved an inch.
Code Is Cheap Now, And That Changes Everything | Pere Villega
AI coding agents have made code production nearly free. Drawing on insights from Kent Beck, Paul Ford, and Simon Willison, this post argues that the value has shifted from writing code to defining systems — contracts, invariants, SLAs, and verification.
AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
AI makes projects with weak engineering culture fail much faster.
Reflections on a decade of coding
I've been programming professionally for about 12 years. Here are some of the things I worked on in the last 2 years.