Earning taste and judgment
This title could be clearer and more informative.Try out Clickbait Shieldfor free (5 uses left this month).
AI agents are automating the repetitive coding tasks that traditionally built junior developers' judgment and taste. Data shows recent CS graduates face 6-7.5% unemployment and junior tech job postings have dropped 34% since 2020, while senior roles grow. The core argument: taste and judgment — knowing what to build and whether it's good — are the durable, ungradeable skills AI cannot replicate. Seven concrete practices are offered for deliberately building these skills: reading more code than you generate, keeping a 'wrong log' of agent mistakes, doing some things the hard way on purpose, going deep on one system end-to-end, learning to specify and verify separately, building an eval framework for AI-generated PRs, and calibrating autonomy per task. The broader career advice centers on finishing the last mile, solving hard problems, building in public, and becoming a T-shaped generalist.
