Expertise in the Age of AI

In the age of AI coding agents, junior engineers are becoming less economically valuable, yet top companies still compete fiercely for exceptional early-career talent—those capable of developing strong "coding intuition" within 2-3 years to effectively work alongside AI tools. Drawing an analogy to how calculators eliminated human "calculator" jobs but didn't eliminate the need to learn math, the author argues that struggling through manual coding builds the intuition necessary to effectively prompt and validate AI-generated code, making this foundational skill increasingly important despite automation. Most new CS graduates won't develop this intuition in time, creating a bifurcated job market where elite engineers command high salaries while a growing tier of lower-paid software consultants emerges.