Even before AI, I’ve witnessed at Google plenty of L6 and L7 software engineers atrophy. They stop writing code, start reviewing code, until they find that their code reviews catch fewer issues than a junior engineer’s reviews. They have become accustomed to thinking only at a high-level, and when met with low-level details they can’t tell good from bad any more. Their coding skills, both reading and writing, have atrophied.

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heartbreak 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Do they also stop providing value to Google as a result?

I don’t get paid to write code, and you probably don’t either.

	▲	grayhatter 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Do they also stop providing value to Google as a result? In the context of a software engineer, yes obviously? > I don’t get paid to write code, and you probably don’t either. I feel like you're rejecting the premise of the argument. You're talking about becoming a manager, as if that track is somehow relevant to software engineers. I used to be a nurse, I'm not anymore. My skills have definitely atrophied. I would now be a shitty and dangerous nurse. How does that apply to my skills at software engineering? When you stop being a software engineer, it's expected your skills at interacting with code will fall away. But the article you're arguing against isn't written for nurses, and equally isn't written engineering managers.
	▲	skydhash 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You are not paid to only write code.