Follow up on my previous writings on agentic coding

What I thought a year and a half ago and what I think now.

To quote myself from late 2024:

…A focus on memorizing or mastering syntax is likely to have a diminishing value as natural language slowly becomes the next highest level abstracted language in our programming toolbox.

That was just some context on what I was thinking more than a year ago on GenAI (a term that I don’t even use anymore) before I reflect on where I am today:

My Turn

Last May I found myself unexpectedly in the job market. In my 30 years as a web and mobile developer, I had never been laid off for any reason. In my case it was a small “restructuring” that led to my position being cut (I estimate that a couple dozen of us were let go). I had always counted myself lucky up until that point.

It took me about 7 months to find my next position. This was for a few reasons, and not exclusively related to the job market.

First, I’m over fifty and the market was not in a growth position for software engineers as it was. There were and are a lot of people to choose from.

Second, I asked each hiring manager what their company and the engineering team’s positions were on AI and, more specifically agentic coding. I knew I was not taking a job with a company who had no position or a negative position on AI. I was fine with ambiguity like “we’re still kicking the tires”, but “probably not doing too much as of yet” was a hard pass for me.

Third, in my 30 years, I had never taken any sort of sabbatical outside a few minor alternate career explorations. I took some time to think, explore, and put some energy into a side business my wife and I had been slowly growing for a couple of years.

No matter how you spin it though, I did not think it would take 7 months.

I thought I was unlucky, but I had gone nearly my entire career without having to deal with unemployment, so I accepted that it was my turn. It was not fun but fortunately, I was financially able to survive it with room to spare. Not unscathed, but not sunk either. Not everyone is in that position.

The Upside

There was one thing that happened, which it turns out, was not unlucky. Having had a vision and a taste of what agentic coding was and where it was going, I had nothing but time to give the practice my full attention. I have been almost exclusively coding with Claude Code since July of 2025. Today, I fall squarely into the “I have not written a line of code” camp on all my personal projects.

It Very Much Is the Reason

There are two types of posts that, today, tell me exactly where people are at with their position on AI. The first are the posts where an engineer, CTO, or “Founder” declares “AI can’t do X” or “AI could never do Y”. I’ll make no bold assumptions on what or how they were doing things, but for every project or exploration I have tried, the coding agent was able to deliver. Perfection was never the expectation, goal, or result. When a project that would have taken 3 months to deliver with a traditional engineer took a week, bugs or no bugs, how do you think a business is going to react? “Oh, it has bugs? Might as well keep all these engineers just to be safe.” Or, “I already get bugs with all these engineers, so let’s throw a couple guardrails and tests in and trim the payroll.” It’s not a hard decision (moral and ethics notwithstanding).

The second type of post, which as of this writing is on the rise, correlates directly with layoffs being attributed to AI and efficiency. These posts suggest that AI may be part of the reason, but argue it’s not the full story. Regardless of the details or the spin, the takeaway is the same: AI is not truly the real reason. I will tell you that it is very much the reason, if not exclusively.

As someone who has been fully in this agentic coding world since the full public release of Claude Code in May of last year, using it across languages, platforms and stacks, including a few I have never used, agentic coding is very much a reason that companies are laying people off, at least the smart ones that have had anything near the experience I have had with the technology.

Many More on the Way

I may follow up with all of my “proof” but at the moment, I just want to capture my position, not document the reasoning. This is moving so fast, that in the next several months, any need to provide justification for my thinking will be absolutely moot as proven out in the industry.

If you look at my resume, you can see I’ve been doing this a while, nearly exclusively, for my professional career. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle, no putting the cat back in the bag. The die is cast, the ship has sailed, and every other poorly aligned metaphor I can pile on here applies.

When I thought I was unlucky, I realize now that I wasn’t. Getting laid off gave me the time to practice agentic coding full time, and like any other skill, it takes time and repetition to become effective at. That head start put me ahead of a sea change in engineering that is now here, one that many engineers are only beginning to see. The layoffs are real, and I am of the mind that many more are on the way.

To be clear, even with a head start, I don't think that puts me or my career in the clear. Things are weird and incredible at the same time. It is part of the reason I've headed back towards my love of the world of embedded electronics and the like. Robotics might be calling my name a bit as well (weed killing laser robot anyone?) :)