Yeah, tbh I used to be a bit agentic coding tool-pilled, but over the past four months I've come to realize that if this industry evolves in a direction where I don't actually get to write code anymore, I'm just going to quit.
Code is the only good thing about the tech industry. Everything else is capitalist hellscape shareholder dystopia. Thinking on it, its hilarious that any self-respecting coder is excited about these tools, because what you're excited for is a world where, now, at best, your entire job is managing unpredictable AI agents while sitting in meetings all day to figure out what to tell your AI agents to build. You don't get to build the product you want. You don't get to build it how you want. You'll be a middle manager that gets to orchestrate the arguments between the middle manager you already had and the inflexible computer.
You don't have to participate in a future you aren't interested in. The other day my boss asked me if I could throw Cursor at some task we've had backlogged for a while. I said "for sure my dude" then I just did it myself. It took me like four hours, and my boss was very impressed with how fast Cursor was able to do it, and how high quality the code was. He loves the Cursor metrics dashboard for "lines accepted" or whatever, every time he screenshares he has that tab open, so sometimes I task it on complicated nonsense tasks then just throw away the results. Seeing the numbers go up makes him happy, which makes my life easier, so its a win-win. Our CTO is really proud of "what percentage of our code is AI written" but I'm fairly certain that even the engineers who use it in earnest actually commit, like, 5% of what Cursor generates (and many do not use it in earnest).
The sentiment shift I've observed among friends and coworkers has been insane over the past two months. Literally no one cares about it anymore. The usage is still there, but its a lot more either my situation or just a "spray and pray" situation that creates a ton of disillusioned water cooler conversations.
Code is the only good thing about the tech industry. Everything else is capitalist hellscape shareholder dystopia. Thinking on it, its hilarious that any self-respecting coder is excited about these tools, because what you're excited for is a world where, now, at best, your entire job is managing unpredictable AI agents while sitting in meetings all day to figure out what to tell your AI agents to build. You don't get to build the product you want. You don't get to build it how you want. You'll be a middle manager that gets to orchestrate the arguments between the middle manager you already had and the inflexible computer.
You don't have to participate in a future you aren't interested in. The other day my boss asked me if I could throw Cursor at some task we've had backlogged for a while. I said "for sure my dude" then I just did it myself. It took me like four hours, and my boss was very impressed with how fast Cursor was able to do it, and how high quality the code was. He loves the Cursor metrics dashboard for "lines accepted" or whatever, every time he screenshares he has that tab open, so sometimes I task it on complicated nonsense tasks then just throw away the results. Seeing the numbers go up makes him happy, which makes my life easier, so its a win-win. Our CTO is really proud of "what percentage of our code is AI written" but I'm fairly certain that even the engineers who use it in earnest actually commit, like, 5% of what Cursor generates (and many do not use it in earnest).
The sentiment shift I've observed among friends and coworkers has been insane over the past two months. Literally no one cares about it anymore. The usage is still there, but its a lot more either my situation or just a "spray and pray" situation that creates a ton of disillusioned water cooler conversations.