Want To Adapt to AI as a Software Engineer? Here Are The Three Pillars For Becoming an Augmented Engineer

The most powerful change in our industry of the last year is AI.

But all most people did in 2023 was use AI to spit out crap content in order to “self-publish” a book on Amazon.

Or ask if AI will take their job and then quickly look for reasons it will not as a form of confirmation bias.

No one seems to be figuring out how software engineering jobs WILL ACTUALLY change as AI becomes more prevalent.

I propose that engineers who want to adapt and thrive in this new world need to adopt the mindset of becoming an Augmented Engineer.

Here are the 3 pillars of being an Augmented Engineer:

Pillar #1: Creativity

No matter how good AI gets, you still need to provide it with some input to get started. Humans that can think well by breaking problems down into an input that AI can understand will excel.

Improve your creativity by working on your:

• Thinking — Mental Models, Distilling, Connecting Ideas
• Design — Systems Design, How pieces fit together, How systems work
• Fundamentals — Understand the basic building blocks, CS Basics

We have the edge over robots when it comes to creativity because we prompt the robots to start. Develop this skill set.

Pillar #2: Communication

Naval said “Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.” This is the learn to sell part.

You don’t have to sell to customers but you need to present your ideas clearly, build relationships with colleagues and managers, and present your solutions.

Become a better communicator by improving your:

• Writing ability — Slack, Email, PRs, RFCs, etc.
• Presentation skills
• Relationship building

Most engineers will ignore this because they are too smart and think that intellect is all that matters. No.

You need to learn to sell, aka communicate your ideas effectively otherwise no one will care how smart you are.

Pillar #3: Leverage

This is the ultimate unlock of the coming years for software engineers.

Software engineers have a tremendous amount of leverage at their disposal:

• Code
• Tools
• AI

We can already write code, our tooling is improving, and now we have AI to help us learn, brainstorm, do the grunt work, and free us to be more creative.

Leverage is what will make the Augmented Engineers of tomorrow 100x more productive than the “10x engineers” of today.