what happens to all white collar jobs when AGI happens is difficult to predict, impossible even but what's happening to all white collar jobs now is fairly simple to see
two things:
1. the difference between average and excellent isn't linear anymore, its logarithmic
2. what made really good developers excellent at their craft wasn't their knowledge about obscure things, it was their ability to think and communicate clearly, breakdown problems and solve them
for a long time, software development has been one of the most incentivized white collar jobs and people have assumed now that its gonna go away.
they have assumed that building great useful software just takes the ability to convert english to code
i disagree. i've been coding with AI(even built the cursor for building ios and macos apps) for more than a year and by coding i mean spending upwards of 8 hours a day in front of 2 screens and begging claude/cursor
here is what i've noticed
- the first step to building software is to talk to users, AI can do that.
- the last step to building software is to convert english to code, AI can do that.
- what goes in between is a lot of care both for the user and the craft and that and exactly that makes software great
i'm pretty sure even if a much powerful AI existed back when there were no iphones, Steve Jobs would still have beaten those creations.
why?
LLMs by design work amazing for average results, to get it to do anything exceptional takes you to be exceptional.
what does that mean for anyone who is working or looking for work?
we have to strive to be exceptional at things we do. we have to genuinely like things we do and care for them. without care, all we get is average and sooner or later a bunch of H100s could replace if all you are providing is average.
AI will make humans authentic, only if you let yourself be. only if you push yourself to be in a direction that aligns with you and work hard at it.
spend a lot of time and care a lot. that's it. and reach out for any help :)
i've been building reliable long running agents for n number of tasks over the last year and would love to chat about difficult problems in the space
p.s. here is what a coding workflow looks like in 2026, will go deeper into this in the next post. have fun nerds.