> > bad engineers were always a liability

> With AI, "bad" engineers can now amplify their "bad" engineering x10 across the organization.

Yup, and that's going to be the comeuppance for a decade of aggresive overhiring.

There are so many "bad engineers" filling the ranks now that in many teams and divisions there's not even anyone left around who can recognize them as such.

This was already manifesting as a rapid decline in software quality and worsening practices, and the amplification effect of AI is mostly going to make everything worse for a while as we wait for all these declining projects to buckle under their weight.

If you are a good engineer, it's a good time to work on small teams with other good engineers and rigorous practices. You can be using AI to amplify what you do (and probably should), but you need to be rigorously considering your processes and guarding yourself from seduction by blind-leading-blind hype you see on social media or in iconference talks.