According to Noah Smith's “The Fall of the Nerds”, investors are starting to realize the potential negative impact that suddenly improved LLM coding capabilities may have on SaaS providers. Why keep paying for a SaaS product that only partly fits your needs if AI can generate a tailored solution cheaply?
Smith argues that developers may shift from specialized engineers to something closer to factory supervisors. Nerds once enjoyed high wages and status because of scarce skills, but we may lose this advantage when LLM agents handle most of the code. Instead of crafting software, developers may end up overseeing farms of coding agents.
I have mixed feelings after reading the post. Losing my elite status doesn’t sound appealing, but my new role as an “AI agent orchestrator” has been deeply rewarding so far (see also my earlier post, where I explain why this way of working feels more enjoyable than ever). Creativity and building things are what motivate me, and I don’t miss the drudgery of debugging at all.
I consider myself fortunate: I have enough experience to provide real value as an engineer in the LLM era (even with the most advanced models, “vibe coding” is not sufficient for any serious business application), yet I’m still young enough to adapt quickly to entirely new workflows. Junior engineers, in particular, are in a difficult position right now, as they appear almost completely replaceable by AI.
Still, it’s unsettling to watch many of the skills I’ve refined over the past decade become obsolete within weeks. As a software developer, I’m used to adapting. Rapid shifts are normal in the technology world. But the pace of change right now feels unprecedented. I no longer have a clear sense of where things are heading. It’s hard to know whether I’ll be able to keep up indefinitely, or whether I’ll continue to enjoy the constantly evolving role developers are being pushed into.