How Artificial Intelligence Disrupts Engineering Progression

AI is disrupting career progression by eliminating the learning opportunities at each rung while simultaneously enabling people to perform above their experience level, Alasdair Allan explained in his talk Engineering Progression When AI Ate the Middle at QCon London. Fewer junior developers join the industry, and AI slows hiring at the entry level. AI is writing a lot of code, and the landscape of what being a developer is has massively changed, Allan said. But writing code was never the point of our profession, he added. Using AI requires supervision, and supervision requires coding skills. If AI handles the work that used to train engineers, Allan questions where the next generation of engineers will come from. AI productivity benefits may come…