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The Software Engineering Identity Crisis
Many of us became software engineers because we found our identity in building things. Not managing things. Not overseeing things. Building things. With our own hands, our own minds, our own code. But that identity is being challenged. AI coding assistants aren’t just changing how we write software - they’re fundamentally transforming who we are. We’re shifting from creators to orchestrators, from builders to overseers. From engineers to something that looks suspiciously like… managers.
Think about those moments of deep satisfaction: when you finally track down that elusive bug that’s been haunting production, when you work out how to optimise that slow algorithm and watch response times drop from seconds to milliseconds, when you transform a maze of legacy code into something clean and maintainable. These patterns reveal a profound shift: we’re moving from producers to managers of AI systems, from detailed implementation to expressing intent, from delivery to discovery through rapid experimentation, and from content creation to knowledge curation. For junior developers or those of us who might feel a bit rusty, AI assistants can be a confidence booster - helping you get started when you’re staring at a blank file, validating your approach when you’re unsure, or explaining complex concepts in a way that makes sense to you.
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