One of my customers is about to start another project, and he asked me for more resources. I run a small team, and the last time I hired anyone was six months ago. A lot has changed since then — specifically, AI coding agents became very good. So what kind of developer should I hire? How do I interview them? In fact, do I even need more developers?
The answer to the last question, for now, is still yes. Agents still require babysitting, despite what big AI calls it. They still make mistakes. And software engineering is not only about coding. Coding agents have come a long way, but I still cannot trust them to do the right thing on their own.
At this point, I believe generalists win. Say I need to develop an iOS application — why would I want to hire an iOS specialist? Knowing the iOS quirks certainly helps, but how hard is that to learn when you don’t really need to learn the iOS plumbing anymore? You don’t really need to learn Swift either. Again, it helps, but it is not a requirement. Coding is cheap now.
So which skills are worth having? Knowing programming in general. Understanding how systems work in general. Knowledge of user interfaces (if you build those), or databases (if you work with those), or other technologies — in general. Business-oriented thinking, user-oriented thinking, the ability to organize things. Generalists win. At least for now.
