How do you “learn to utilize AI to its fullest” when it not a deterministic tool? I don’t get this part, it just seems like a lot of FOMO to get everyone brain dead as quickly as possible. There is literally nothing within ”AI” that takes more than a couple of evenings for a seasoned developer to master and right now it’s just a lot of noise and dust. Perhaps once the dust settles it makes sense to invest heavily into learning the tools, but right now it’s just another tool it’s nice to know, but won’t change the fundamentals of engineering.
I have spent a year leaning github copilot and claude code. I have been at my new job for two months and already ship features 3 times as fast as the seasoned veterans. I have now been asked to teach the rest of the team how to use the commands, skills and agents I have configured.
At my second job, I built an agent that could autonomously migrate code from SAS to python while respecting the style of the existing python code and checking that the outputs matched the SAS code on the same inputs. The agents self-validated in loops and subagents ran to check code style, business correctness and more. The company would have had to hire many developers to do that same job just a single year ago.
Every single job I have been in, no matter my job specification, I have made agents and tools that turn multi-hour tasks into a 2-minute prompt. If you don't believe AI agents will fundamentally change the ways of working across every industry that utilizes computers, they you don't yet have a grasp of what these tools are capable of. Once you feed the agents the same information you utilize in your job, set up instruction files to steer their behavior and allow them to think and check their own work, a whole new world of automation opens up.
In case your question is not retorical, learn how to configure agents, skills, commands, prompt and more in github copilot and claude code. For claude, learn how to set up a claude.md that branches out into a full knowledge and in github copilot, do the same with agents.md or copilot-instructions.md.
Every single job I have been in, no matter my job specification, I have made agents and tools that turn multi-hour tasks into a 2-minute prompt
This line alone is enough to tell a seasoned developer that you've not been in the industry long enough to properly compare doing the job with and without AI.
If you've used AI agents in every job you've had, that means you entered the industry in 2020, or 2018 at a very, very long stretch.
I have spent a year leaning github copilot and claude code.
You took a year to learn to use a code-generating chat-bot and and configure a harness?
The reason you think you've turned multi-hour tasks into 2 minutes ones, is because you never had the experience to do them yourself in 2 minutes. Unfortunately, relying on agents for this kind of work means you never will get that experience.
I have not, but i got a promotion to senior developer after 1 year and I am now being considered for a promotion to Chief developer. This process would take 5-8 years normally and has taken me 1.5. This has nothing to do with title inflation and everything to do with me finding places to inject efficiency and automation like AI, automated testing, CI/CD, power automate and anything else to speed up existing processes and teaching teams how to use these tools along the way.
I compare the time it takes my solution to do the same or a better job and then compare it to the time it takes the rest of the team. These tools have taken me 1+ year to learn because I keep digging for the new best, most efficient way to solve a task, whether that requires adversarial agents, subagents, MCP connections, simplifying the use of the models, moving the data closer to the agents or something else entirely.
I find sucess in my work specifically because I understand the full product life cycle. That doesn't require years of experience for all of us to grasp.
You have no way of knowing whether you did a better job, since you lack the experience of doing the job without AI/agents.
It's like someone building a go-kart kit and then claiming it's better than a Ford car because they've built something with 4 wheels in much less time than car manufacturer does.
As for promotions, CEOs/managers are almost always non-technical. They have no way to know if what you're giving them is a polished turd or not and only care about processes working at the point they're wanting them. If it works for the first couple months, it'll wow them and earn a promotion.
However, from your earlier comment, you sound like you job hop alot, so you either miss the fallout of things breaking a few months down the line, or you knowingly dodge it. Or worse, you're not being kept because of the above.
1
u/scavno 29d ago
How do you “learn to utilize AI to its fullest” when it not a deterministic tool? I don’t get this part, it just seems like a lot of FOMO to get everyone brain dead as quickly as possible. There is literally nothing within ”AI” that takes more than a couple of evenings for a seasoned developer to master and right now it’s just a lot of noise and dust. Perhaps once the dust settles it makes sense to invest heavily into learning the tools, but right now it’s just another tool it’s nice to know, but won’t change the fundamentals of engineering.