Greg Knauss Is Losing Himself
What I am talking about is being replaced, about becoming expendable, about machines gaining the ability to adequately perform a very specific function that was previously the exclusive domain of skull meat.
What I’m talking about is that nothing I do matters. That nothing I can do matters.
In just the past few months, what was wild-eyed science fiction is now workaday reality. I’ve been dubious about the prospects of LLMs creating code (and lots and lots of other things) for as long as they’ve existed, but it’s hard to argue with the latest wave and their abilities from a purely practical, purely capitalistic, purely ship-something-anything perspective — the perspective that pays the bills. I’ve seen self-professed non-technical people bring functioning code into being, and that bests a significant number of actual humans I’ve worked with.
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Is the code any good? I don’t know. Who cares? Nobody looks at it anyway. AI produces a result, and results are what matter, and if you’re waiting for quality to factor significantly into that equation, I’ve got some bad news about the last 40 years of professional software development for you.
I’ve been using Claude Code quite a bit lately, not so much to replace my programming but to augment it. The new animated image export preview in Acorn 8.4.1 was a direct result of that. It was a nice little feature that I knew exactly how to do, but I hadn’t prioritized getting done yet because there were a bunch of other things on my plate. But with a little assist, it was quick to implement.
But why bother implementing anything when anyone can make an app in an instant? […] But at the same time I’m not worried about being replaced by AI, or by quick free apps that have been built by AI. And in some ways I’m more hopeful than ever.
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I’ve got feelings because anyone can put an app together now, so what’s the point of me? But at the same time, I can focus on what I want to focus on and hopefully charge forward and maybe everyone else will get tired of little vibe coded apps because you still have to know exactly what you want to build. And you can’t build something you can’t think of. And I know how to think and I have ideas.
And I have discipline and I know how to ship. And in my experience, that’s what has always mattered.
Brutal numbers for US tech sector jobs released today—overall, employment decreased by 12k last month and is down 57k over the last year
In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an “average” developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position.
Contrary to what many say, I don’t think it’s simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren’t. Juniors are still getting hired because they’re still way cheaper and they’re just as capable as using AI as anyone. The people getting pushed out are the intermediates and seniors who aren’t high performers.
Yet Citadel is saying that the job openings for software developers are rapidly rising
Amazon’s ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a “deep dive” into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools.
The online retail giant said there had been a “trend of incidents” in recent months, characterized by a “high blast radius” and “Gen-AI assisted changes” among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT.
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AWS suffered a 13-hour interruption to a cost calculator used by customers in mid-December after engineers allowed the group’s Kiro AI coding tool to make certain changes, and the AI tool opted to “delete and recreate the environment,” the FT previously reported.
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Amazon has undertaken multiple rounds of lay-offs in recent years, most recently eliminating 16,000 corporate roles in January. The group has disputed the claim that headcount cuts were responsible for an increase in recent outages.
That said, if you have a job where you create complexity for others, you will be found out. The days of rent seekers are coming to an end. But not because there will be no more rent seeking, it’s because rent seeking is a 0 sum game and you will lose at it to bigger players. If you have a job like that, or work at a company like that, the sooner you quit the better your outcome will be. This is the real driver of the layoffs, the big players consolidating the rent seeking to them. They just say it’s AI cause that makes the stock price go up.
The trick is not to play zero sum games. This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns. If you create more value than you consume, you are welcome in any well operating community.
Previously:
Update (2026-03-18): Heinan Cabouly:
Amazon mandated that 80% of its engineers use its AI coding tool Kiro weekly. In the three months since, an AI agent deleted a production environment, two outages wiped out 6.3 million orders, and Amazon convened an emergency engineering meeting — while still insisting AI had nothing to do with it.
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Software development for sure is changing. For 4 years AI was my intern. With Codex it's becoming more complex. I can now implement features in hours what look days before. Not looking at the code is the stupidest thing to do because code quality still needs to be maintained. I need to do way better with prioritizing my work. What was before an iterative design becomes way more upfront design.
When I started my Comp Science degree, almost 30 years ago, there was a person there that lasted a month before transferring to another degree. They were irate that we had to code. Their feeling was that engineers, and other professionals, design. They don't build. If they were studying to be an Architect they wouldn't be out hammering planks of wood together, or a Civil Engineer out mixing cement.
I've thought about that person on and off over my career, often when I've been fighting with Xcode, doing mindless monkey work. The tooling should be much better.
But I've been particularly thinking about it of late with all the backlash against LLM tools. I design. I don't build. This is just another evolution in that. And those that don't want to accept that, perhaps consider doing something else with your life. I don't know about other countries, but in Australia we are crying out for tradespeople. And they're paid obscene amounts of money. Go learn how to hammer wood together or mix cement. Run a pipe. There is something very noble about building something physical that actually has a lasting contribution to society. You may be much happier than yelling into Twitter or Mastodon about "evil AI."
It’s really fascinating to see such a large group of people act in such an irrational way.
The big AI screw up can’t come quick enough.
A bigger outage - something to get these people to chill out and get back to work. We can’t just accept a new tool we have to eat our own faces off.
I simply refuse to believe anyone can ship an app when I'm surrounded by people who can barely use their computers.
Gus Mueller is actually wrong. There's a bajillion AI clones of WigglyPaint. The original program is free and not AI designed, not AI fabricated, not AI anything. But this free app is getting buried by AI clones that ripped him off and often charge users money to boot. So how do you carve out a niche in life this way? Anything that has been made can simply be duplicated faster and cheaper. Not necessarily better.
Ps I just sung the praises of Gus' Acorn just a couple days ago, crossing off the list. Oh well.
Also, can anyone clarify if Gus is using local or cloud instances of Claude Code? If the former, fine, whatever, but if the latter, then he can buy me more RAM since cloud AI has made prices about 4 times more than what I paid in September for 2025. So no, I reject the use of AI coding until prices of personal computers and related devices are back to what they were a mere 6 months ago. SSDs are pricey now too. Thanks AI backers!
It's disappointing that Acorn is now at least partially AI generated. It was a very cool app that didn't quite meet my needs but I supported it anyway. Now I'm certainly not going to support it anymore.
I don't understand why the theft of so much work and the environmental impact and the social impact and the mental health impact and the education impact aren't enough for some people to reject AI, but it's more than enough for me
This is the third time that a large chunk of my skillset has been made redundant thanks to technological advances. But it's very surprising.
Previous times has been that a language I was really good at fell out of fashion. This time it's that there is no need for wireframes and Figma prototypes anymore. I can do something that's easily 10x better in about a 10th of the time using Claude Code in VSCode.
But for minor changes it's better that the devs just implement the feature and ask the client to look at it and comment, rather than having me do some wireframes for a couple of days.
Like with monkey made selfie photos the courts have begun holding that AI generated images and videos cannot be copyrighted. So watch that space for a lot of fun discussions.
I don't want to come accross as criticising anyone involved with this story, but fundimentally it feels like part of the problem is just how invested people get in the identity of being a developer or a programmer. I write software and work as a developer, but it isn't who I am in any real sense.
If my skills become obsolete, I'll move on to something else. Heck, if I make use of my handyman skills and work to pick up plumbing or electrical or welding, I'd probably make more money.
