ETA: summary…
Author describes how agentic coding tools have disincentivized the developer training and mentorship pipeline that the software industry has implicitly relied on to produce seasoned developers, predicting that once the shortage is fully realized it could take years to reverse.
The solution proposed is for managers and senior developers to get ahead of this shortage by foregoing the immediate yet shortlived productivity maximization offered by the agent-multiplied-senior structure in favor of longterm sustainability by deliberately facilitating experience fan-out to juniors.
The methodology proposed is based on a successful nuclear engineering apprenticeship program carried out on active service naval submarines.
This is probably a bad thing, but I can live with general programming skills becoming the new COBOL programming skills.
I think it’s going to be a weird period where we’re expected to do everything that involves real engineering, anything “business centric”, and they’re going to be like “yes we gave you $500k annual, please provide the Secure And Well Architecture of the Olden Times… We need you to redesign a new system from scratch because the slop is losing us money”
…which I’m personally okay with, because I didn’t really save that much for retirement or plan on it anytime soon? I was getting more worried about grey hairs aging me out of software, but maybe they’ll age me back in.