to answer directly, i live in claude code now. and while it's a different shape of daily work, i'm still engineering, still evaluating those 3 factors and figuring out how to triage and solve user-problems much faster than i could 5 years ago.

Frontend stuff for me, which I'm bad at, I let agents do all of and I test the end result.

Other things are in-between, but time wise it's probably mostly me writing code. Lines of code is the LLM for sure.

People are kidding themselves thinking they fully understand what is going on at a deep level for 3-4 (or more) parallel tasks constantly context switching. It's also an anxiety-inducing way to work and has led to a proliferation of agent management tools enabling max efficiency.

Focusing on systems thinking/observability/knowing when NOT to build something/using agents to fix/learn new things quickly seem to be where I see devs still bringing the most value compared to any other cowboy.

What wouldn't an average person off the street be able to do?

I think you're mistaking typing characters on a keyboard for coding. Designing a system is coding. Knowing what refactorings to do to ensure things evolve in the right direction is coding.

Being able to recall all the syntax has lost value due to AI, but designing and leading the feature development hasn't and that can't (yet) be trusted to AI.

I'm not too worried about keeping skills sharp - if I'm ever put in a situation where they become relevant again I'm confident I can just relearn them.