The Biggest AI Bottleneck Is in Your Head

Prelude

The sky is falling. Or so my LinkedIn feed tells me.

Every day brings a new prophecy. The end of the programmer. The obsolescence of the Product Manager. The death of the creative. We are told that we are standing on the precipice of a jobless future where an algorithmic god writes our code, designs our interfaces, and manages our backlogs.

I have spent twenty years building systems. I have seen frameworks rise and fall. I have seen methodologies promised as silver bullets turn into lead weights. And now I see a panic that is less about technology and more about vanity.

The fear that AI will replace you is not based on the capability of the model. It is based on the fragility of your ego.

If your entire professional identity is wrapped up in writing boilerplate code or shuffling Jira tickets, then yes. You should be worried. But if you are a builder? If you are a thinker? This has changed absolutely everything.

The "replacement" narrative is a myth. But it persists because it hides a much scarier reality. You aren't going to be replaced by a robot. You are going to be exposed by one.

The Binary Panic

The orthodoxy of the tech world right now is a binary panic.

The Doom-Mongers: They look at tools like Devin or GitHub Copilot and see an extinction event. They argue that because an LLM can generate a React component in seconds, the human who used to write that component is now waste matter.

The Defensive Egoists: Engineers who scoff. "It hallucinates," they say. "It can't understand context." They retreat into a fortress of arrogance. They believe that their "gut feeling" about system architecture is a magical property that silicon can never replicate.

Both sides are wrong.

The doom-mongers miss the point of engineering. Engineering is not typing. It is decision making. The defensive egoists miss the point of progress. They are holding onto low-value work because it makes them feel smart.

Recent studies show the panic is real. A massive 74% of IT professionals believe AI will make their skills obsolete. You can read about this fear in 74 Of It Pros See Ai Making Their Skills Obsolete.

Research consistently indicates that AI is not a replacement for human expertise but rather a powerful augmentation tool. See Ai And Job Displacement Myths Vs Facts. The data shows that new technologies create more jobs than they displace. But the nature of those jobs changes.

The Cracks in the Orthodoxy

I built an agent last week. It was supposed to refactor a legacy Python service. I gave it the repo. I gave it the context. I told it to behave.

It wrote beautiful code. Elegant type hints. Docstrings that would make a librarian weep. It was perfect.

And it was completely wrong.

It had hallucinated a dependency that didn't exist. It had optimized a function that was never called. It had misunderstood the business logic because the business logic was irrational (as business logic always is).

If I were a junior developer who defined my worth by lines of code produced, I would have shipped that. The system would have crashed.

This is where the cracks in the orthodoxy appear.

The "God Complex" in software engineering is real. We are prone to it. See The God Complex Why Software Engineers Are So Prone To Ego. We think our ability to memorize syntax makes us geniuses.

AI strips that away. Memorizing the arguments for a kubectl command is not genius. It is trivia. And the robot is better at trivia than you are.

There is a concept called "Skill Obsolescence." It is accelerating. Half of all current skills might be outdated within two years. But this doesn't mean the job is outdated. It means the toolbelt is changing. See Half Of All Skills Will Be Outdated Within Two Years Study Suggests.

The Rising Waterline

The reality is that AI raises the "waterline" of quality.

Imagine a sea of competence. Above the water is value. Below the water is commodity.

For decades, we have been paid handsomely to work below the waterline. We have built careers on writing CRUD apps and configuring Webpack. We have convinced ourselves that this drudgery is "craft".

It isn't. It's plumbing.

AI is flooding the engine room. It is raising that waterline. Everything below it is now automated.

• If your value proposition as a developer was "I can write a React component from a mock" you are now underwater.
• If your value proposition as a PM was "I can take notes in a meeting and write a user story" you are now underwater.

This is the source of the panic. The people screaming the loudest are the ones who were treading water just above the old line.

You can read about this shift in How Ai Changes The Meaning Of Expertise A Deep Dive.

The Quality Paradox

As the cost of generating code and content drops to zero, the volume will explode. We will drown in AI-generated apps, articles, and products. Most of it will be rubbish.

Therefore, the value of curation and expertise skyrockets.

The ability to delete code is now more valuable than the ability to write it.

The ability to say "no" is more valuable than the ability to generate "yes".

This is the paradox. The more AI creates, the more human judgement costs.

See The Human Edge In The Age Of Ai Why Expertise Matters More Than Ever. Genuine expertise is the only filter we have left against entropy.

The Indie Agency Era

There is another shift happening. The death of the silo.

AI collapses the relay race of Product → Design → Engineering → QA → Ops.

A single engineer, armed with the right tools, can now do the work of a small team. A designer can prototype functional code. A PM can query the database directly using natural language.

We are moving towards the "Indie Agency" model of work. Small, multidisciplinary teams of experts who use AI to punch way above their weight. See The Indie Agency Era The Shift Toward Talent First Tech Enabled Creative Work.

In this world, "It's not my job" is a resignation letter.

See The Importance Of Interdisciplinary Collaboration In Ai Projects. The complexity of modern systems means we need diverse perspectives.

Implications for Product Managers

The Product Manager is not dead. But the "Project Manager" masquerading as a Product Manager is finished.

The new PM is a "Builder." They are technical. They understand the materials. They use AI to explore the solution space before they hand it off to engineering. See How Ai Is Redefining The Product Managers Role.

When the cost of building code drops to zero the cost of building the wrong code becomes the primary risk. The PM's job is to reduce that risk.

Implications for Engineers

The Software Engineer is not dead. But the "Code Monkey" is finished.

The new Engineer is a "System Architect." They treat code generated by AI as a raw material. Their job is to refine it. To secure it. To integrate it.

They must move from "Writer" to "Editor." This is a hard transition. Editors have to be better than the writers they edit.

See The End Of Expertise As We Know It How Ai Will Redefine What Being Skilled Means.

The Interaction

This is where the magic happens. The interaction between the PM and the Dev.

In the new world the artifact is shared. The PM brings a working prototype (generated by AI). The Dev tears it apart. They sit together. They co-create.

This requires mutual respect. See Leveraging Ai To Improve Business Collaboration And Make Teams Smarter.

The Jam Session Mental Model

Forget the "Assembly Line." Forget the "Handoff."

Think of it as a "Jam Session."

In a jazz band everyone is a master of their instrument. The drummer doesn't try to play the piano. The pianist doesn't try to play the trumpet.

But they all listen to each other. They react. They build on each other's ideas.

The AI is a new instrument. It is a synthesizer that can sound like anything.

The PM is playing the melody. They set the direction.

The Engineer is the rhythm section. They provide the structure. They ensure the whole thing doesn't fall apart.

If the PM stands up and says "I don't need the drummer anymore because this synthesizer has a drum loop" the music dies. It becomes mechanical. It becomes soulless.

The audience (the users) can tell the difference between a loop and a drummer.

Conclusion

The robot isn't coming for your job. It's coming for your boredom.

The AI revolution is a mirror. If you look into it and see a replacement, it is because you have made yourself replaceable. You have settled for mediocrity.

But if you look into it and see a lever? A way to build faster, better, and bigger? Then you have nothing to fear.

To the Product Managers: Stop trying to fire your engineers. You need them.

To the Engineers: Stop dismissing your Product Managers. You need them.

The future belongs to the teams that can integrate AI without losing their humanity.

It belongs to the teams that respect the craft.

The waterline is rising. If you are standing alone you will drown. If you are standing together you will float.

Originally published at tyingshoelaces.com

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