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The most junior and the most senior engineers benefit most from AI, while mid-level engineers are in a dangerous spot.
Thomas argues that junior engineers gain a massive uplift from AI's knowledge and senior engineers leverage it as a farm of agents, but mid-level engineers risk being squeezed. ✦ AI generated
Thomas Paul Mann · Platformer · 2026-07-22 · original ↗
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“Two years from now, does Raycast have more engineers or fewer?”
The two types of engineers — and maybe individual contributors in general — who benefit the most from AI are, one, the very senior person, and two, the very junior person. The person in the middle is in a bit of a weird spot. The very junior person suddenly gets a massive uplift, because they have access to this untapped intelligence that knows everything... The very senior person suddenly has a farm of more junior people, in the form of agents, and can steer a lot more things in parallel.
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- ·Junior and senior engineers benefit most from AI
- ·Mid-level engineers are in a dangerous position
- ·Thomas Paul Mann identifies a widening gap
- ·Juniors get a massive uplift from AI's knowledge
- ·Seniors gain a farm of agents to steer in parallel
- ·Mid-levels lack both the knowledge gap and leverage
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explains mechanism → As AI makes almost everything promptable, the capacity to be genuinely engaged with, care about, and defend one's work — rooted in effort and dedication — becomes the key differentiator between engineers.NeetCode (Navdeep Singh) · The Pragmatic Engineerrebuts → 97% of tech workers feel AI makes them better at their job, but digging deeper reveals people mean they can produce more output faster, not higher-quality output, and many report a decline in their own thinking and judgment—a 'cognitive rot.'Noam Segal · Lenny's Podcast