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The vanishing "Proof of Work" in software engineering

1•shivang2607•1h ago
In 2023, I spent six months building a recommendation engine from scratch using vector search and manual indexing. Today, an entry-level dev can prompt a "weekend project" that looks 90% as good.

While I admit that productivity is up, the "signal" for talent is disappearing. Just by looking at resume its incredibly hard to identify difference between a Vibe Coder and a Real Software Engineer. Resumes these days looks more or less similar, same type of skill set, same AI language.

Everyone is building something, and consumers are very little. We are now in Era where builders' population is exploding but real architectural understanding and prowess is going down.

Is there a new "Proof of Work" for developers? If the "How" is automated, does the "Why" become the only signal left?

I'm curious what everyone else thinks about this "Skills Convergence" we are seeing.

Comments

vietthan•1h ago
Reminds me of artists, how do artists stand out when photography can do better capture of reality (and easier, and cheaper, etc.) than artists can. Artists had to re-invent (or re-discovered, re-focused, etc.) themselves in all kinds of ways like cubism, impressionism, surrealism, etc.

Would coding in [brainfuck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck) be the marker of good engineers?

In the end, the criteria remains the same. The engineers that creates products other people would pay for. The engineers that can convince executives to pay them or let them do this and that freely. The engineers that are thought leaders and have wide audiences.

Anyway, at the micro level, I think "How to How" is still important. I believe in developers that can talk about their workflow in detail, how it evolved over time, etc. Really good engineers invest in the workflows of themselves and others. That's my benchmark before and still is even now.

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