Right now, I am an independent software developer, and so I own all of the code I create. So, of course, I want it to be as efficient as possible to write that code, and I use AI to do that. I get all of the benefit. I am not replaced—I am freed up to do other things.

All of my consulting income comes from work that originated from my network, cultivated from over 30 years of delivering on my commitments. Some of it is because I am one of only of few people that understand a codebase (that I helped create and partially own). There are very few people that could replace me in this work, even with AI. Even if AI were able to 100% reproduce everything I say and write, the client wouldn’t know how to judge it because their judgement of me is almost entirely based on past experience.

It’s not just AI—there are many people who are smarter than me, with more experience, who work harder, and have better judgement. But if they are completely unknown to my clients, they couldn’t replace me.

Of course, I realize that this isn’t something that one could just replicate immediately, but if you are building a software engineering career for the next few decades, I recommend cultivating a network that trusts you based on your past performance and owning as much of your own work as possible. When you do that, all of the benefits of efficiency flow to you.