Agentic Engineers Redefine Software Development Amidst AI Integration

Key Quotes

"The big ai ceos like dario and sam altman in 2024 said that 2025 would be the year of agents and it really was like we got there we did it I think sam said like it's less than a thousand days away maybe like a year ago so that's in two years and now their timelines have shifted"

Brandon Gell notes that prominent AI CEOs predicted 2025 would be the year of agents, and this prediction largely came to fruition. However, Gell observes that these same leaders have since adjusted their timelines for achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), suggesting a more complex and lengthy path than initially anticipated.

"I think that designers are the next big superheroes of the AI age like they have been uniquely enabled in this world because forever designers have what they're good at is they have a lots of taste and they have like a vision for how they want an app to work and they've just bumped up against like well I have to convince this developer to do this for me for a long time and I just see so a good example is lucas our creative director inside of every he has turned into this machine where he's not only like this incredibly creative designer art director kind of person he's also like vibe coding little apps that let him do his work better"

Dan Shipper posits that designers are poised to become significant figures in the AI era, as AI tools now empower them to translate their creative vision and taste directly into functional applications. Shipper highlights Lucas, Every's creative director, as an example of a designer who has leveraged these tools to both enhance his creative output and develop functional apps.

"I think that we will definitely see layoffs that companies blame on ai in 2026 and I think mostly they will not be actually ai related they will be about the underlying business but they'll use ai as a good excuse"

Brandon Gell predicts that companies will attribute layoffs in 2026 to AI, but he suggests these will often be a pretense for underlying business issues rather than a direct consequence of AI implementation. Gell believes AI will be used as a convenient justification for workforce reductions.

"I think AI progress is still really fast and it's kind of mind blowing where where we are now versus where we were a year ago and I think that will be the case in at the end of 2026 I think we'll be sitting here being like wow it's like actually a lot better and the world and agi however you define that is a lot more complicated and hard than we thought"

Dan Shipper asserts that AI progress continues at a rapid pace, noting the significant advancements made in the past year and anticipating similar acceleration by the end of 2026. Shipper also acknowledges that the realization of AGI, regardless of its definition, is proving to be a more intricate and challenging endeavor than initially perceived.

"I think there's like now basically three types of software engineers maybe there's four types one type is just traditional engineer and never uses ai which I think is getting less and less but like they're definitely still a thing it's definitely they're definitely still there they're super skeptical all that kind of stuff but the more interesting thing are the are the other three"

Dan Shipper identifies a shift in software engineering, outlining three to four distinct categories of engineers. Shipper notes that while traditional engineers who avoid AI still exist, the more significant development lies in the emergence of other groups, particularly those who integrate AI into their workflows or adopt entirely new AI-centric approaches to engineering.