Becoming a Senior+ Engineer in the Age of AI
I don’t know about you, but I grew up and cut my teeth in what feels like a special and Golden age of software engineering that is now relegated to the history books, a true onetime Renaissance of coding that was beautiful, bright, full of laughter and wonder, a time which has passed and will never return.
Or will it?
I’m sure every single writer of software will have this same sort of idyllic feeling when they look back to the days of yore when they were young, dumb, and full of amazement at the idea of a for loop, reading a file, a web server, heck, maybe even recursion. It’s similar to the feeling you get when you think about your hometown. But, then you drive through it there is nothing left but a musty pile of rubble.
Ah, the bitter sweet past.
Hand writers of code are the new blacksmiths at the county fair.
Is it me, or is this what it feels like these days? I was recently wandering around in the sweltering heat of the county fair this summer, showing my children the wonders of homemade ice cream, caged tigers (yes), the rodeo, cotton candy, wierd vendors, and other such things.
We purchased the wonderfully delicious sarsaparilla from the General Store, walked a few steps farther, coming to rest inside the even hotter and more sweltering heat of the blacksmiths shop. Two old gentlemen filled that workspace, taking turns pounding away on molten iron, hurrying around like some madman, twisting, turning, pounding, dunking, and generally creating a commotion.
A thought crossed my mind as I eyed this unique and beautiful scene.
Who will do it when they are gone? In all kindness, they appeared to be on their last (proverbial) leg.
And then I thought about the software I grew up writing, and still write. Am I them? Will the future generations crack open Cursor, close their eyes, and vibe code their way to glory? There was a day when I cracked open a terminal and a text editor, and dived my way into Perl or a LAMP stack.
These are two VERY different approaches to learning, writing code, and understanding what is happening behind all those bits and bytes.
Being realistic
But, before I wander off into the woods, sining my forlorn song of loss, like the Elves forced to migrate on ships to the East, leaving that troubled “Middle” earth … I had to question myself. I am I really living at the crux of a generation that will simply not understand how to twist and best metal (code)?
Is this what the Assembly and C writers of software said when Perl and PHP took over the land they had tilled and cultivated their entire lives? Did they wring their hands in despair about those newbies that simply don’t understand memory layout, what CPU cycles are, and are generally incapable of writing good software with the world sure to grind to a halt??
Are the young’ens and green behind the ears developers of today; who will live in a Cursor world where globs of code are spewed out like so much sewage, which drains down into the codebase to forever pollute the land for generations to come, are they the truth on which the future will be built?
What’s an engineer to do?
It feels like our only two options are …
- remain like an old tired blacksmith, who writes and forms every single piece of code, and become a spectacle to be brought out on special occasions to be gawked at by the masses.
- bow down to the Cursor god that is here to reign, give it our undivided devolution, tell it your deepest desires and let it flow.
The third option feels dirty, am I sinner Lord, forgive me, but I do it anyways. Much like Johnny Cash, I walk the line. Who am I to kick against the goad of the sea of CTOs and CEOs who have decreed from on high that we must give our homage and code to Cursor?
How can I turn my eyes from that most tempting of apples, and not take a sweet bite from it when all I have to do is type … “Cursor, my love, write me a PySpark function that gets the latest record and drops all duplicates?”
It simply slides off my fingers like butter and that answer is so sweet … I didn’t have to wait for it, It looks beautiful, it comes out nice and formatted with comments, unlike my unruly and malformed thoughts. Why must I not look with desire on that most wondrous AI that is able to do all my work for me?
I will tell you what a Senior+ Engineer should do.
I have good and bad news for you. Depends on who you are. Weep, howl, and moan all you software engineers, I have a word from on high for each and every one of you.
- Young One?
- Eat of that sweet AI fruit, let it fill you and drip from your fingers. But, let not the gushing forth bury you in it’s might flood.
- Realize that writing code was NEVER and HAS NEVER been that most precious jewel that takes you to the promised land of Senior+ Engineer.
- Do not be a slave to lord Cursor, through that deceitful lover down from its lofty thrown at your feet and declare thyself Thane of this your coding realm.
- Old One?
- Do not look with distain upon the lust of the youths to pour forth their AI monsters.
- Reach out your hand and taste that AI is good.
- Remember from whence you rose to power. Not by code, but by experience and systems knowledge.
- Use that Cursor beast as your most faithful servant, to enable you to expand your kingdom.
If you find yourself in a place where your value and worth is directly tied to the amount of code you produce, now would be the time to sit up and take notice. This is not the place for you. Code is cheap, it always has been, Cursor has made it even cheaper. No matter how good the models get (just think over the last two years), your true value shines brighter now at the darkest coding hour, than it ever has.
- Become a systems designer and thinker.
- Use your experience to inform your decisions at a high level before finger ever touches keyboard.
- Learn to plan large projects.
- Learn to deliver on time and on budget any project.
- Learn common mistakes other software writers make, and don’t do them.
- Learn to bring simplicity into complexity and chaos.
- Learn communication skills, both verbal and written.
- Learn what is important to the business and what impacts the bottom line.
- Learn to build teams and teach others.
- Learn to say no.
- Learn to ask “why?”
- Learn how to make tradeoffs and hard decisions.
- Never stop learning and understanding new and old things.
- Learn and practice fundamentals.
- Learn and be good architecture.
- Learn and be good at DevOps and CI/CD.
- Learn how AI can improve and expand your impact and workflow.
If you do these things, melt them together in a big pot and pour them down your ear and into that busy brain, you will reach Senior+ Engineer level and stay there for a long time to come. You will be valuable. More valuable than you can imagine, every single year that births a new cohort of Cursor addicted devs will only make you smile bigger and settle into your chair a little more.
Your human experience over the years, your ability to adapt and solve human problems in a Software context is what Cursor cannot do.
Cursor is rigid. Cursor doesn’t know your Product manager. Cursor doesn’t know who your CTO is. Cursor hasn’t been around your company long enough to know the pain points and problems as good as you do. Cursor can’t take that junior dev and tell them it’s ok that they broke that thing, and how you broke something too many times over.
But, don’t get me wrong. I have tasted that Cursor apple, and it is sweet.
Cursor has broken the chains that have entangled me to the daily grind of the never ending amount of code that needs to be written, and will continue to be written. Cursor has helped me understand unfamiliarity concepts, find bugs quickly, give me a plethora of solutions to choose from.
Cursor has made my planning of a new Greenfield project much quicker than before. It can summarize things I’ve already read and understand, it can make suggestions of what I might have overlooked in a planning a new technology or feature. Cursor has become my Tonto.
You need to walk the line.
The world has changed around you, I’m sorry to say it isn’t going back. You can be the cowboy who rides off into the sunset, so attached your horse you can no longer go to town with all those dirty and noisy cars. I can respect that. I respect you. I get you.
I too sometime miss the days of servers, of PERL, of other mundane tasks that captured my imagination and sent me down the path which I walk today. Those days don’t have to be gone forever. Rust is here, take its hand and wander away some Saturday night down a mysterious trail to who knows where. You won’t regret it.
How do you become a Senior+ Engineering in the Age of AI?
Much like it was in the age before AI, it is NOT by spewing and endless amount of mediocre or fancy code. If you got promoted to Senior+ Engineer by simply writing more code, than I guess you can ignore me and continue on your merry path. To do real, meaningful software work that crosses boundaries and solves company wide problems …
This is not found in simply more code.
In fact, it’s found in the opposite place from the code. That’s what the Junior Engineers do, and consequently fall on their own sword to their own destruction. Dead projects, bloated costs, business stakeholders angry. Don’t make those mistakes my friend.
Be good at code. Be BETTER at the other stuff.
