Hiring an entry level developer in 2026: "Must have five years of experience reviewing code generated in 30s". AI coding has created in interesting paradox. The people getting the most value from coding agents are usually the experienced engineers. They know what good looks like so they can spot suspicious output and recognise when the AI has pulled an API endpoint out of the hat. So, how do we get junior developers to acquire that judgment if AI removes the struggle that traditionally created it? One way to do it is to preserve some productive friction: - Explain the approach before generating the code - Own and defend any generated code - Actually spend some time to debug problems instead of going to the agent right away - Measure understanding, not lines of code produced We need to be better at enhancing the learning experience with AI, not replacing it. If every junior developer becomes an AI manager on day one ... who becomes the senior engineer five years from now? #CTOThoughts #AugmentedEngineering Inspired by the article AI Coding will Prevent Expertise - https://larsfaye.com/articles/ai-coding-will-prevent-expertise

@Cursor: “Together it’s a couple of hours to implement your fixes.” Me: 😲 56 seconds later... Cursor: “Fixes are in, tests pass, and no lints. Here’s what changed.” I think we’ve entered a funny new phase of software development. BEFORE: “I can do that in 10 minutes.” Translation: 2 hours writing the code. 8 hours debugging and testing. NOW: “This will take a couple of hours.” Translation: It’s done before I get a cup of coffee. Development speed changed. Our ability to estimate apparently didn’t. At least some things in software engineering are predictable. #SoftwareEngineering #Cursor #DeveloperTools #CTOThoughts