How AI is changing my role as a software engineer

The contract I didn't get

A few years ago, I had an interview for a contract role to migrate an existing application from one software package to another. The contract was for an initial three months at a really decent rate, with the expectation that it would be closer to six months.

This wasn't the most advanced technical project in the world, but it needed some skill. I've done a couple of these before. There are definitely ways it can go wrong, and the risk to the client was quite high.

The end result needed to be pixel perfect. It had to look exactly the same as before. No one using it should know anything had happened. The migration would all be under the hood.

That would have meant a lot of meticulous code reviewing, understanding what was there and then restructuring it. A lot of quality assurance, testing all the screens and getting staff to test things as well.

Now look, I didn't get that role. I thought I was a good fit and really capable of doing it, but they went with someone else. That's fine.

A similar requirement, a very different timescale

Recently, a similar requirement came up for another client I work with. Here's the interesting thing.

I spent half a day prompting, planning and working with AI on what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. That included digging into the architecture, the gotchas and the things to look out for.

Then I left it on its own for 24 hours.

I've spent another half day testing so far, and it seems pretty close to perfect. There were a few bits to correct, but it's pretty good. My team are going to do some QA and review it, so that part is still to come.

Now, it's not quite a like-for-like system. But even allowing for that, a few years ago this would have been months of work. I've got this far in what would have been the best part of a weekend.

Compared with the six months expected for that contract, that's getting close to a hundred times faster. It's a rough comparison, with different systems and some QA still ahead, but the change in pace is very interesting.

Where my time goes now

Software engineering just isn't what it used to be.

For me, it used to be maybe 10% of my time spent on planning and discussions. Around 70%, or more, was spent typing by hand, figuring out the code, how to word things, how to structure files and all the logic. Then another 20% went on quality assurance and testing.

Now the typing-by-hand part is utterly gone. It's zero. I don't type a single thing by hand for coding. In fact, I dictate most of the instructions now.

I'd say it's more like 70% of my time spent on planning, discussions with clients, writing specifications, working through compliance, data protection, backups and talking through big features. All that sort of stuff. Then about 30% on QA.

I've written before about the difference between writing code and software engineering. This is what that shift looks like in my own work.

Some of the hype comes from a real place

Look, I know there's a lot of AI hype out there. A lot of AI bros and a lot of people peddling something. I still think it's overhyped.

But I think some of it does come from a real place of truth. A lot of people like me are experiencing this sudden boost in productivity.

And it's not just double the productivity. A few years ago, that would have been incredible. Doubling my coding productivity would have been absolutely amazing.

But in the space of a few months, I can now 100x the output for certain tasks.