It makes me wonder how these 5 senior engineers came to found a company that works like that. Do they not like writing the code? Do they have dreams of being rich? Do they believe the product they will produce is so essential that the process doesn’t matter?

I started programming when I was 14 years old, and turned 34 this year. That makes about 20 years.

Figuring out the syntax of a new language, the satisfaction of getting something to compile, and getting the "perfect" dev environment on my Arch Linux install was a lot of fun. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything, but at this point I've gotten all the fulfillment I'm going to get from it.

Even before AI agents came along, I had already moved on to caring about the impact of the software: benefit to society (for my open source contributions); revenue to company (for half my day job); learning business skills to improve my earning potential (for the other half of my day job).

I would delegate the actual coding to junior engineers, and spend most of my time designing the higher level architecture and everything else needed to herd them into delivering the high level business objective.

Unfortunately, the current generation of AI agents (Opus 5, GPT 5.6 Sol) can do a somewhat similar role to those juniors. They don't have the human element that made it fun to mentor the juniors, but they also don't have feelings so I can give them feedback without worrying about coming off as a condescending asshole.

Dunno if that's helpful at all to you, but if you're genuinely wondering why a decent chunk of senior engineers are sticking around in the AI world, then there's one perspective.

The only way I see this ending is Juinor wages plummeting and turning into unpaid internships or paid (the other way) ‘educational programs’.

I do have a slightly more positive note on that. Universities are slow to adapt their curriculums to new technologies, but they will eventually care that they're producing graduates that provide so little value to companies that they're unemployable.

They'll begin to produce graduates that are the equivalent of today's mid level and senior engineers. While I don't know exactly what kind of education can instill in 4 years the essence of what took me decades to learn, I do know that pretty much every generation of humans have surpassed their parents so far. So I have every confidence you kids will figure it out.

i think they like other stems,. like biotech has done rely more on the senior level/scientists, of course they hire less of them, and not hire any, or barely any of the entry or junior level employees. so its a law of diminishing returns for a employer since they are mostly holding onto more "experience" employees.

Yeah part of why I posted it here was to avoid causing juniors unnecessary anxiety. It’s ultimately seniors who will need to have a plan in place to prevent this. And to be clear no senior worth their stripes wants this, because yes it would be soul sucking.

What would be the point? We’re already solving solved problems and reproducing known design patterns for someone else’s product. Money problems are solved pretty early in a developer’s career, so for most that motivation has diminishing returns. Meaningful work is harder to come by where the air gets thin, and developing people is where many of the best developers rediscover it. They won’t just give that up and spend every workday managing bots for nesting yacht riches.

Also new tools are just tools. Anyone who thinks they can replace human judgement needs to read more. Stakeholders will prioritize short-term profits because they’re free to be greedy shortsighted fools, but engineers who are any good at their jobs don’t have that luxury. They look ahead. They have a bench. Because that’s the job.

So i wouldn’t worry about this too much. If you want a takeaway from articles like this, something to give you an edge, maybe check out the new tools. Learn how to run them on basic local machines, how to train them, and understand what they can and (more importantly) can’t do. Even if it’s just to prove to yourself why they could never replace you.