Your hedge against AI as a programmer

Because AI has been 3-6 months away from replacing programmers for the last couple years, it's a good idea to think about how one can avoid being one of the programmer casualties.

I put some thought in regards to how to best work around AI.

With the way I see AI going based on the underlying tech available, it seems like there's three primary paths:

• Go deep
• Go wide
• Exit the game all together

Going deep means specializing so hard the AI can't keep up. There are fields that simply don't have enough public data available for AIs to statistically generate good content. For example video game code, or anything that requires deep understanding of the machine.

The disadvantage I can see here is that potentially it will become exhausting to keep this up. Eventually AIs will become good enough that you're digging deeper and deeper.

Going wide means taking advantage of the fact that AI can't actually think in multiple contexts at once effectively, and it needs a human to guide it through individual tasks. Potentially they will improve this with Agents and better feedback loops and so on...but it's unclear. There is so much noise in the AI world, everybody's trying to convince the shareholders/investors of things that are not real.

I already invested in this particular path for the last 10 years, when I decided I want to be a full stack engineer (from server hosting to front end), with some level of depth I've currently achieved this, where I am thinking more holistically than the AI.

Exiting the game means becoming an entrepreneur. I am no longer competing to convince my boss that I am more valuable than AI, or than another human+AI. Now I'm competing with other humans directly on who can use AI the best. And I'm only trying to convince the market that what I offer is worth giving me money for. But in fact that was always the case.

Coasting is not an option. In my career, I mostly coasted. With the harder job markets I struggled to find a job. I realized that, course corrected, and then in even tougher markets I could find a job within a month, because for 1.5 years I busted my ass to learn more, earn more titles at work, etc.

All of these paths will require a deep commitment to improving your skills continuously. Coasting is over. If you coast it'll be difficult to even find your next job. It's difficult as it is.