I am seeing only the surface of the power of coding assistants, but I can already imagine what a Senior Software Engineer can do today with the available AI tools. The most well-known ones right now are GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, ChatGPT, and Amazon Q. As far as I know, only GitHub Copilot can be used on a monthly basis with a limited number of code lines and chats. In general, to use one of these tools, one has to pay at least 10 dollars per month.
With the help of these coding assistants, the major skill I need is to read fast. Writing code is not strictly necessary anymore. Writing prompts and chats is probably becoming the main task, because the code can be written by the assistant. However, reading quickly and understanding the code is crucial, so that it can be modified manually if necessary (although it would often be sufficient to re-run the AI multiple times so that it finds and fixes its own bugs).
A Senior Software Engineer, with the help of these coding assistants, is probably at least 20 times faster at writing code. The number 20 is just a personal estimate based on my feeling; I am sure it could be much higher. You can sit there, assign different tasks to your AI assistants, and let them generate the code. The role of the Senior Software Engineer is to double-check that everything works perfectly.
What is required today is, of course, expertise — but the most important skill is common sense combined with knowledge. This means a deep understanding of the business, the goals, and how technology works. The “real labor” is now largely done by code assistants. There is no doubt that these tools will have a massive impact on businesses and the marketplace.
The use of AI tools is creating a huge gap between beginners and senior workers. I can already see this impact in different places. In my opinion, it is becoming increasingly clear that everyone will need to adapt to AI. Not everyone will need to understand AI deeply, but at least everyone will need to understand and use AI tools.
AI Agents
AI agents are already here. In 2025, I heard about them and thought they might arrive in a year. Well, they are already present. The impact is that everyone needs to become much more effective — and I believe that, in a short time, this will become the new normal. This also means paying for services and for the right hardware. In other words, there will be increased expenses for AI services and more powerful computers to manage larger amounts of data at higher speeds.
Normalization
Today, the market is already splitting almost everything into “effective” and “non-effective.” In many areas, “effective” means someone with AI knowledge or someone who can properly use AI tools. “Non-effective” is someone who works the same way as five years ago, or someone who uses AI tools without really understanding what they are doing.
It will take some time until the use of AI becomes normalized, and then we will have a new baseline. This is the curse of capitalism: there is no final goal for efficiency. The bar is constantly raised. The hunger is endless. This is good news, because it means jobs will continue to exist. At the same time, it is also bad news, because anyone who is unable to adapt to the new marketplace is simply left behind.
There are many ways to look at reality. When talking about AI, I am using a capitalist lens. Some people know that other realities exist and believe that the presence or absence of AI is completely irrelevant. But this is not the topic here. In our main reality, we need to adapt to AI-driven changes.
If you are working today, there is no need to panic. Just think about how to learn, step by step, new tools that can make your job more effective.
Juan Carlos
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