Talk
AI: The End of Jobs or the Start of Freedom?
AI is rewriting what it means to be a developer. As a mid-level SRE and platform engineer, I've watched AI evolve from a helpful assistant into something that can write, test, and deploy code faster than I can — and that's both exciting and unsettling. Many of us have wondered what our roles will look like when machines start doing the work we used to. But what if this isn't the end of our jobs, but a shift in how we create value? I began to rethink what skills actually matter — realizing that the real value lies not in writing perfect code, but in using AI to solve meaningful problems and adapt quickly. From there, I started walking two parallel paths. The first is as an engineer inside a company — using AI to become a better problem-solver, not just a faster coder. At my company, we even use an AI agent in our own on-call rotation: it automatically reads incoming incident tickets, searches our knowledge base, and diagnoses the root cause before an engineer even opens them. The second is as an independent builder — applying the same tools to build and iterate faster than ever. Tools like Claude for code generation, Gemini-TTS for interactive services, and Imagen or Veo for visual content have turned what used to take weeks into days, helping me create products that look and feel far more complete with a fraction of the effort. AI might raise real concerns about job security, but I see it as a reason to evolve, to find new ways to stay relevant, to build, and to grow. This is how I've chosen to move forward, and how I'm learning to live, not against AI, but with it.
