Benn Stancil’s commentary about the changing nature of software development (vibe coding is all the rage now, kids!) draws an important conclusion: If developing software (aka writing code) becomes more and more democratized, what stronghold do places like Silicon Valley have on innovation?

Taking this thought a step further – if the value is less and less in the software development process and rather in domain expertise in the problem space, will we see a geographic shift of innovation ecosystems toward their respective client spaces?

Just as it's becoming harder to out-write an LLM, it's becoming harder to out-develop one too. And if experts can prompt their way to a product just as easily as those of us in Silicon Valley can, what winning talent are we left with?

Link to article.

Despite this blog post by Will Larson being written from the perspective of, and for, software developers, his insights into the impact of AI on careers (both from the perspective of an individual as well as a company) ring true across the spectrum:

The technology transition to Foundational models / LLMs as a core product and development tool is causing many senior leaders’ hard-earned playbooks to be invalidated. Many companies that were stable, durable market leaders are now in tenuous positions because foundational models threaten to erode their advantage. Whether or not their advantage is truly eroded is uncertain, but it is clear that usefully adopting foundational models into a product requires more than simply shoving an OpenAI/Anthropic API call in somewhere.

In our sessions, we often open with the observation that “we are trying to solve new world problems with old world thinking.” In Will’s words, our playbooks become rapidly obsolete, and in many cases, we haven’t developed new ones quite yet.

Sitting out this transition, when we are relearning how to develop software, feels like a high risk proposition. Your well-honed skills in team development are already devalued today relative to three years ago, and now your other skills are at risk of being devalued as well.

And as this world is moving at a frenzied pace, the above seems to be doubly true. As someone else recently wrote: Now might be the worst time to take a sabbatical.

Link to blog post.

Remember the promise of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)?

We are 25 years into the MOOC era. We have near unlimited access to the world’s best teachers on YouTube, and yet our education system isn’t producing independent thinkers. How is this possible?

In this account from an Indian company about their experience hiring people – and their struggles finding qualified personnel (the company is in the learning space nonetheless) – it provides both a fascinating look at the job/applicant market and the struggles with new approaches to learning.

Geoffrey Huntley on the impact of AI on coding tasks and jobs (in his case).

I seriously can't see a path forward where the majority of software engineers are doing artisanal hand-crafted commits by as soon as the end of 2026. If you are a software engineer and were considering taking a gap year/holiday this year it would be an incredibly bad decision/time to do it.

It’s a well-put-together piece of thought – even if you are not a developer (maybe even more so, unless your job solely relies on your manual labor skills). Highly recommended to read and reflect upon.

This is highly likely to be true (and exciting – at least for some of us):

If you’re a high agency person, there’s never been a better time to be alive…

Link to article.