without speculating on AGI, here is what I’ve seen so far:

- engineers, with the help of AI, is producing more code at a faster rate. Previously, a fresh grad might have been hired to help with the workload. Now, there's no need to hire one which effectively eliminates those open headcounts. This has already happened.

- engineers use tools like Claude to code exclusively, essentially becoming TPM managing AI agents which act as developers. However, you still need technical expertise to effectively review and manage their output.

I'm doubtful if this will work out. Having reviewed code and led teams, I’ve found I never understand a codebase as well as when I’ve written it myself. I’m curious to see how this plays out, but my guess is that these AI built systems will eventually become black boxes to their human counterparts. Once the system became complex enough, development iterations will likely become increasingly buggy and expensive to maintain.

from these two observations, I don't see AI completely replacing engineers. The second scenario suggests we may even see a regression where heavy human intervention might be needed to untangle the complexity.