By Barry Buck – Remember when everyone was going to be replaced by AI? When LinkedIn influencers declared that learning to code was a waste of time because ChatGPT could do it all? Yeah. About that.
Software engineering hiring is climbing again. Not despite AI – because of it. The industry just discovered what those of us who actually ship production software already knew: AI is a spectacular prototype machine and a catastrophic architect.
The “vibe coding” movement – where non-developers or junior developers strap on AI like a magical hat and conjure applications through vibes and prayers – has produced what the industry is now politely calling “AI slop.” I’d call it a technical debt tsunami, but the industry already has enough water metaphors.
Here’s the thing about tools. You can buy R100 000 Japanese hairdressing scissors, rare Italian upholstering knives, high-end sable paintbrushes, or R3-million worth of music studio equipment. But without the hard-won talent or the thousands of hours of mastery behind the hand that holds them – the result will speak of the creator’s skill, not the tool’s price tag.
AI is the most powerful tool ever handed to developers. It is not a replacement for developers. The slop proves it.
The data backs this up. Demand for AI engineering oversight roles has surged from 35% to 60% year-over-year. Nearly half of all developers say debugging AI-generated code takes longer than writing it from scratch. Entry-level postings have dipped, but mid-to-senior roles – the people who can look at AI output and actually know whether it’s good – are up significantly.
Companies aren’t hiring coders. They’re hiring editors. Architects. Grown-ups.
And here’s the beautiful irony: the developers being hired to clean up AI slop will also be using AI. The difference is they’ll wield it with the architectural knowledge, the pattern recognition, and the battle scars that only come from years of building systems that don’t fall over at 2AM on a Sunday. Your development instincts need to at least rival the LLM – not to beat it, but to guide it to shore.
The golden age of software developers isn’t ending. It’s just getting a reboot.
Barry Buck is the chief technology officer of Saucecode and Roboteur architect
www.saucecode.tech