AI Took Away This Software Engineer’s Sense of Identity

Summary

In this personal essay, a software engineer describes how AI-assisted development has changed his relationship with programming. He says that years of building projects, solving difficult technical problems, and receiving feedback gave him a strong sense of identity as a software developer. Now, while waiting for five Claude agents across three projects and managing his personal context window, he feels that the concentrated problem-solving and creative flow that once defined the work have largely disappeared. He does not reject AI: he acknowledges that it enables software to be produced with unprecedented speed and quality and argues that employers would be economically irrational to avoid it. However, he believes AI has shifted his role toward consulting, meetings, and negotiating feature details, work he finds less fulfilling than designing and owning technical solutions. Because he does not expect another employer to preserve the previous mode of work, he is considering leaving the industry to find fulfillment elsewhere.