AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
SMRTR summary
A Monday morning coffee, thirteen pull requests, and a codebase no one actually understands. That's the new reality for software engineers navigating the age of AI-generated code.
The argument is striking: AI hasn't just changed how code gets written, it's removed the speed limit on bad decisions. What once took a struggling engineer months to bungle can now happen before lunch. A developer opens a pull request with 25,000 lines of AI-generated code, and when asked where the data comes from, responds, "Let me ask Claude."
The deeper problem isn't the AI. It's that understanding still takes time, and no model has changed that.
The author argues this is quietly reshaping who gets hired and what they're worth. Good engineers, those who can evaluate, question, and genuinely understand what AI produces, are becoming more valuable. Those who can't are becoming a liability at unprecedented speed.
"AI can write the code" does not mean "I don't need to understand it anymore." That distinction, simple as it sounds, may define careers in the years ahead.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Lobsters.
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