Author(s): Caspar Bannink – AI Engineer

Originally published on Towards AI.

How Will The Future Software Engineer Distinquish Itself When Writing Code Becomes Fully Commoditized?

I have not hand-written much code lately.

After noting that AI speeds up implementation, the author argues that the bottleneck shifts from writing code to product judgment, systems design, and taking responsibility for outcomes. They warn that as agents become capable of building even more agents and end-to-end workflows, the scarce skill moves again—toward deciding what should exist, what customers will trust, which edge cases are unacceptable, and who owns costly mistakes. In that world, UX becomes more valuable not because screens are safe from AI, but because deep product knowledge comes from observing real users and understanding what friction builds trust. The article concludes that full-stack engineering will change: the weak “ticket-to-standard-interface” version becomes less defensible, while a broader skill set remains valuable—translating vague needs into executable constraints, evaluating before trusting automation, making cost/latency/privacy/reliability visible, and owning business outcomes after deployment. Finally, they recommend building or learning toward a “compact product company” mindset: maintain technical depth, add customer-facing and strategic skills, and stay close to real users and real responsibilities rather than treating coding itself as an identity.

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Published via Towards AI