Today I got replaced with an AI. Well, not quite. But I was part of the roughly 40% of people laid off from Block, and the reasoning from the top was clear: they believe AI will deliver such a boost to productivity that the extra headcount simply isn’t needed anymore. So in spirit, if not in letter, the message was hard to miss.
I don’t agree with that assessment. I think it’s optimistic in the short term and glosses over a lot of what actually makes software work. That said, there’s a kernel of truth in there. AI isn’t going away, and for people in software, it’s increasingly a case of keep up or get left behind. Denying that doesn’t help.
While I was at Block, I had access to pretty much every AI tool under the sun. Now I need to figure out what actually works when you don’t have an unlimited budget. What’s worth paying for, what’s good enough for free, and how to build a workflow that doesn’t depend on “we have a contract with everyone.”
I’ll be honest: I’m still an AI skeptic. I used it as much as I could at work partly because there was pressure to, but also because it felt irresponsible not to try. Even so, I often preferred writing code manually. I like the craft of it. The idea of leaning on AI first still doesn’t come naturally.
Throughout my career as an iOS developer I’ve always focused on productivity; that meant getting deep in the platform and in Swift. That’s still important. But AI is now gaining knowledge faster than I am. To keep increasing my productivity I need to become an expert in AI tools, not just in the language and the frameworks. The leverage has shifted.
That’s partly why I’m starting this blog. I want to work through the ups and downs of working with AI in the open. What helps, what gets in the way, and how to move toward a more AI-first mentality without losing what I care about in how I build software. If that’s a journey you’re on too, you’re welcome to follow along.