We can now say: we live in a world, sorry, an “emerging reality”, where we can have [waves hand] anything at any time to a basic level of competence, and all of the real problems, the “people problems” still exist. And this is finally proof positive, hard evidence, that artefacts are not really what we’re here for. We are demonstrably optimising about a mile from the bottleneck. AI may be giving you a million prototypes, but if you listen, AI is telling you in quite a painful way that being able to get feedback on your artefacts is much, much more important than the artefacts themselves.
And now it’s easier than it’s ever been to make that argument. Good!
…
It also seems obvious that a load-bearing part of those systems right now that we haven’t ever questioned is the now “old-fashioned” form of direct practice which brings junior developers into contact with the work, with the tools, and with the domain. …
It won’t necessarily directly result in worse code, but I think it’s reasonable to be wary of the direction of travel for the work. I’m worried that in thinning down the direct practice, we are interfering with important feedback loops between people and the domain, people and their teams, their peers, and their orgs.
– Team dynamics after AI | Mechanical Survival (Retrieved: [2026-07-17 Fri 16:00])