I was reading LinkedIn over the weekend and saw a fascinating post from Jason Alexander:
One group is still debating whether AI coding tools are “cheating” or will “make developers lazy.” They’re sitting on the sidelines, arms crossed, waiting for the hype to die down.
The other group shipped three features last week.
I think it's worse than that. I think there are full groups of programmers who don't care (and never will) about what language they're writing in, what patterns are being used, or whether their code is considered "crap" by more experienced engineers.
It's always been this way, with one key difference: AI helps them create better code than they might have otherwise, and it helps them create it faster. These people are completely focused on shipping, because that's what actually pays the money. Well-written code costs money because it takes time and time, as we know, equals money.
The counter argument to this goes something like this:
Yes, but, shipping crappy code means it needs to be fixed at some point, which costs money. Often meaning costing much more than the initial effort!
This is true, and has always been true. One thing that is often overlooked, however, is that there is actually a company in the first place, which probably wouldn't exist at all unless they went the "ship crap, fix later" route. This fact also creates a great job market for the more experienced coders to come in and fix things!
Which is kind of cool, if you know what you're doing.
The Vibe Janitor
Yep, it's a real thing, with a better title than "Vibe Janitor" I suppose:
I think this could be a very well-paying job, because it's the natural progression of a job that's existed forever: the senior developer.
I have plenty of friends who make a wonderful living by cleaning up enterprise coding projects. I did this for a while, and it was kind of fun, and you end up with some interesting stories.
Such as the time I refactored a 3000 line stored procedure that parsed XML manually. In another, I removed 149 IRepository<T> implementations and plugged in Entity Framework. It's interesting work and pays well - and will continue to pay well.
If, as I said above, you know what you're doing.
If you're being called to come in and fix a dumpster fire vibed out in a week which is also generating $50K/month - they're not going to commit to a 4 month rewrite. You'll soak up their entire budget!
If, however, you can flex your experience and "low-key vibe" a solid replacement? You're gold. That, friends, will be an extremely valuable job in the very near future.
The AI Pro
There's a solid market for these people moving forward. People who have:
- 10+ years of software experience
- A complete understanding of AI tooling
- The ability to bend these AI tools to your will as a senior programmer in order to produce solid, scalable code
- The knowledge and understanding of why documentation is critical, and how to have it produced for you by an LLM
- A wide range of AI skills, including how to create team standards, dedicated agents, dedicated skills, and stored prompts
In short: not only someone who can fix the project, but also "right the AI ship" using best practices learned over the years.
These skills will become mandatory for every person who considers themselves a "software craftsman". I also think that providing these skills to others will be a fun, fascinating endeavor... one that I'm about to embark on.
I've spent the last few years at Microsoft training very large internal engineering teams on what's new with AI, and how to use it. I've led workshops and training to many other companies since leaving Microsoft, and I think the time is right to create a new workshop that focuses on the "software craftsperson", and how they can adopt, and thrive, with AI tools.
To that end, I've put together a workshop which I'm hoping to ship in the coming weeks. It's called "The AI Pro", and I'm aiming it at experienced programmers who want to help transition their team to using AI.
The goal is to show you the emerging patterns when it comes to using AI, and the tools you can flex to deliver value at ridiculous speed. Topics will include:
- Metaprompting. How to stop wondering what prompt to write and, instead, having one written for you
- Tooling. Each coding tool has its way of doing things, and we'll focus on Copilot together with Claude Code to see how, and why, you can abstract your coding process using the built-in tools
- Customization and Abstraction. We now have agents, instructions, skills and prompts. What goes where, and how do we share all this with the team? Or should we!
- Thinking in documents. Prompting is fun, but a well-written plan with receipts is much better, and can save your job.
- Using leverage to save tokens. Rather than ask Claude to do a thing for you, have it write a reusable script or tool.
There's a lot to this workshop and I pushed the initial preview last Friday. The final form might change, but if you'd like to take a look at and see the current structure, it's right here.
I was thinking I would offer this as a standalone workshop, but I'm beginning to rethink that. It's much, much easier (and more cost-effective for customers) to go the membership route. I'm open to feedback on this, so hit reply if you have any!
Oh, also, I'm offering a heavily discounted membership offer for the next week or so to everyone on the mailing list. I'll be upping the membership to account for the new workshop (rather than sell it individually), so I wanted to offer something special to existing folks. Also, if you're an existing member, don't worry you're locked in to whatever rate you have now.
Where are you on all of this AI churn? All in? On the fence? Or are you wishing it would all go away? I think I've been all three of these at some point, but it honestly doesn't matter what I think as it's going to happen anyway, and I think I'll do what I've always done: adapt and look for the silver lining.
Thanks for reading!
Rob
