Blunt opinion: Most devs are not that good and really only execute what they are told to do.
The threat of AI for devs, and the way to drastically improve productivity is there: keep the better devs who can think systemically, who can design solutions, who can solve issues themselves and give them all the AI help available, cut the rest.
That’s how I feel too. When I was an architect at a ~300-person company, a big chunk of my job shifted to reviews, technical design docs, and guidance. I’m getting great results by feeding context like that into Claude Code, then reviewing and steering what it produces.
It really does feel like a multiplier on me and I understand things enough to get my hands dirty where Claude struggles.
Lately I’ve been wondering if that role evolves into a more hierarchical review system: senior engineers own independent modules end-to-end, and architects focus on integration, interfaces, and overall coherence. Honestly, the best parts of our product already worked like that even before AI.