The problem with "engineers will review" is: Critical review requires expertise. Expertise requires experience. Experience comes from building. Builders build because they like to build. So when builders are asked to do nothing but review, they will eventually tire of their jobs and leave, sometimes not just the job, but the industry entirely. The lower the quality of the agents' output, the faster this will happen.
Why does this sound very much like the argument toward full self-driving? If drivers need to be watchful of mostly autonomous ones, they get bored and lose attention or sometimes take nap in front of the steering wheel. Waymo came out of an extension of this argument..
> So when builders are asked to do nothing but review, they will eventually tire of their jobs and leave, sometimes not just the job, but the industry entirely.
I do agree that a lot of engineers who want to do everything the old manual way are about to get really frustrated.
I don't think this is as universal as you say. There are a lot of engineers who are excited and happy to use these tools. Leave the bubbles of Hacker News, Lobsters, and similar sites and a lot of people are embracing these tools.
You also skipped the step where someone needs to direct the design. In the pre-LLM era it was commonly accepted that engineers who advanced to very senior roles would become less connected to the implementation details and more connected to steering, reviewing, and directing. Only a few years ago Hacker News was full of anecdotes about staff engineers who barely wrote code any more. Those people will have no problem switching to a new world where LLMs are handling implementation details.
The point stands, though. Senior engineers can detach themselves from implementation details because more junior engineers still do the hard parts. In the AI case, agents are the "engineers". Eventually all competency will be within AI domain and none within human one.
Why people are so eager to surrender their birthright to the machines for the mess of pottage?
If people want to build stuff they can, they just may not be paid for it. But if we don't need to pay anyone to do anything then it also doesn't matter that you aren't being paid, as you'd have all you need, and you can spend your time tinkering away on low tech/cottagecore enterprises like designing an ASIC or making bread.
