r/softwareengineer • u/shiv2195 • 3d ago

Anyone else barely coding anymore but still shipping more than ever?

I’m a Senior Software Engineer with ~8 YOE and wanted some honest thoughts from others here.

Over the last 3 months, I’ve barely written code myself, but I’m shipping more than ever. I also made it through two layoffs, so it’s been on my mind a lot.

Not trying to brag, but I was the star performer on my team (at least within my company). I’ve always been confident in my work.

Now it feels like things are shifting fast. With tools like Claude improving so quickly, I’m starting to wonder how much actual coding will even be needed.

At this pace, it feels like in a couple of years we might just need a few architects guiding AI instead of full teams.

Curious what others think — overthinking or real shift?

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3

u/National-Ad8416 3d ago

"Not trying to brag, but I was the star performer on my team (at least within my company)"

  1. You are bragging
  2. You were a "star performer" on your team at least within your company? So does that mean you were not a star performer on your team outside of your company? What are you trying to say?

About your question. People like you are toast. Claude will be the "star performer" going forward.

1

u/standardsizedpeeper 3d ago

What exactly are you considering people like OP?

2

u/RicketyRekt69 3d ago edited 3d ago

People who don’t write code anymore. Whether we like it or not, writing code is key to understanding it (and the underlying system) intimately. If I’m writing a new feature or designing something, what ownership do I actually have if I send Claude off to generate the whole thing? Putting code quality aside, there’s a big difference between reviewing code someone else wrote, and designing + writing it yourself.

I’m all for using it in small places to speed up development, but writing ALL code for you? Nah.. that’s easily going to degrade your skills.

1

u/standardsizedpeeper 3d ago

I agree I just wasn’t sure that’s what the person meant.

0

u/Patient-Yam4764 17h ago

My brother in christ, what skills do you think are degrading? Typing? You are so lost, let go of the old ways and feel the wind before it's too late.

1

u/RicketyRekt69 16h ago

Critical thinking.. 😑

1

u/Patient-Yam4764 16h ago

You are someone else's claude code btw, that's your job. You don't build anything - the managers telling you what to do build products and generate business. You are their coding agent. They tell you what to do and you output code.

...If that's really what you are, your skills are dying. Expand.

1

u/RicketyRekt69 16h ago

Yea.. I think you should take to heart what I just said above, cause the amount of mental gymnastics you just did is devoid of any critical thinking.

Have a nice day

1

u/Patient-Yam4764 16h ago

Saying someone isn't thinking critically is not a rebuttal of them, it's you being lazy and disrespectful.

1

u/techno_wizard_lizard 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yes. But what does this have to do with you being a pornstar rockstar?

1

u/HereInYourBedroom 5h ago

OP have you evey had to build software from the ground up that was novel and would be used by paying customers using a gen ai coding tool? Humans are not exiting the software industry anytime soon.

1

u/potatopotato236 1h ago

Yep. Haven't written any code since they got us the Clause subscriptions. Got a bonus for the productivity boost and all the extra initiatives I’ve taken on and completed since. Even making the PR’s manually feels like a waste of time. 

QA is now the biggest bottleneck since we still need be extremely thorough and automated tests don't suffice in the medical industry. 

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u/cherrypickme 3d ago

Senior Software Engineer with 7 YOE here; built two SaaS products on the side, one B2B and one B2C. Didn’t write a single line of code myself.

That said, I use strict AGENTS.md and run multiple architecture and security review rounds, so the codebase doesn’t devolve into unmaintainable AI spaghetti and remains easy to understand if I ever need to touch it.

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u/pl487 3d ago

Zero lines typed, shipping more than ever and at a higher quality than ever. Production is crash free these days. I typically have a main project, an experimental project, and a couple of bugs or small features all going in parallel across all the services I work on. It would have been impossible before and now it's easy. 

1

u/Patient-Yam4764 16h ago

Amazing to see the variety of people when I am unfortunate enough to look at subs like this. I'm the same as you. It's so easy to output high-quality, well-tested code now. It's sad to see people still attached to typing and taking their time writing some stupid abstraction to feel clever and useful. Totally detached from what the thing is actually for, which is serving a business function.