The role of a software engineer is shifting from manual coding to managing fleets of AI agents as a tech lead or wizard.

“IC engineers are becoming tech leads. They're basically like managers now. They're managing fleets and fleets of agents.”

Steve Yegge argues that software development is shifting away from manual construction toward engineering tasks that leverage AI-driven orchestration.

“I think we are just being faced squarely headon with the notion that there are there are two two levels or two phases of software. There's construction and there's engineering and people are holding on really hard to construction.”

Software engineers must adapt to AI by shifting their focus from tactical coding tasks to higher-level strategic work and dreaming up what to build.

“you have to move as a software engineer from spending maybe most of your time in coding to higher level tasks. >> Okay, >> it'll free you up >> actually to to think bigger, right? >> So imagine you had lots of interns today who can actually help you write code.”

Developers should use AI coding assistants rather than manually writing all their code.

“If if you're manually writing code in in uh this year 2026, you are way behind.”

Software development should prioritize programmer happiness over technical metrics.

“Ruby is designed to make the programmer feel good. Like, what? Wait, what did you just say? It's about programmer happiness.”

A software company should embed engineers in all internal departments to create automations and ensure secure AI adoption.

“We embedded engineers in in in every place and even in the places which aren't engineering. So our talent team will have an engineer, our legal team will have an engineer, our revenue engineering or go to market engineering have engineers embedded all across”

Non-disclosure agreements regarding software are harmful and create victims rather than being benign business practices.

“See, this was my first encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and I was the victim. And the lesson it taught me was that non-disclosure agreements have victims. They're not innocent, they're not harmless.”