We are only in March of 2026

This March I had the pleasure of speaking at SCALE 23x, making this the first public speaking events that I have done in my industry. I only have positive things to say about the experience and I truly look forward to next year. While this was my first speaking event, it will certainly not be my last.

Being at SCALE this year felt a bit different; I was coming in as a speaker, yes, but I also had made so many new friends in the communities that I was going to meet for the first time in person. It also meant that I got to see friends I made from before! Shout out to Jason and his fiance for plenty of laughs and awesome support for first talk. This year, Pasadena was seasonably warm and sunny, which made me happy to have the hotel right next to the conference center. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the sun!

How could I not mention Planet Nix. Unfortunately, the greater Boise area does not have a NixOS user group. So going to Planet Nix was a thrill to be surrounded by contributors, users, friends, and people curious about the world of Nix. This year I felt more empowered to be a part of the community and contribute, and look forward to submitting a talk for next year on a project I am just starting to work on. Just a little hint-it involves Nix and converting one of the projects I contribute to into the Nix ecosystem.

Overall, it was a great event. The expo felt different this year; in more ways than one. I will touch on that later. The two keynote talks I attend (Cindy Cohn’s and Mark Russinovich’s Toward a Secure and Sustainable Open Source Supply Chain) were remarkable. Cindy inspired a room full of “hackers” to continue to push for our right to privacy and to show the public that the malicious hackers that make the news everyday are not who we are. Mark took us all on a great journey through his involvement in Open Source, the importance of remaining vigilant on the security posture Open Source projects have in the age of “AI”, and reminding the chads that (and I am paraphrasing) “it is not a flex to ship your code and not look at it.” That was the line that made me laugh and clap. I knew of Mark only in various articles I have come across over time, but to see him talk and nerd out in all the right ways was great. Cindy and Mark were a great duo to have for a Saturday/Sunday Keynote. I need to get that clip of Mark saying that….

I don’t know what to title this part

I’ve been thinking about this particular topic every single day since January 1st. No, this isn’t a “New Years Resolution.” This was more of a revelation-AI is unavoidable. You cannot physically go a day without it creeping into your life and we are at the point where you cannot hide. It is here and probably to stay. I am sure people said the same thing about when the calculator was invented, the typewriter, computer, etc. These inventions changed how the entire world worked, but we ultimately moved on.

Like everything, there were pros and cons to these inventions. We could do things faster, more efficient. Yet, something was lost in the process; job, skills, art. But things moved on. We moved on. So why can’t we move on now?

My take on this has changed so many times since I started using AI to help troubleshoot difficult errors, make time consuming changes 100x faster than I would ever be, but I always held myself back from diving into it head first. Come January 1st, I took the plunge.

It seemed that people recruiting for jobs were only interested in how I used AI to improve my workflow. When I would explain how I still held my hand on the steering wheel, it seemed to push them away. The feedback? Well, nothing because we still live in a day where we are told to ask for feedback after being passed on for a job but then receive nothing. I have had maybe one or two instances where I actually got feedback. Guess what, it was awesome feedback and I improved myself. Of course, most of the responses were just blank, but I knew that it was because I wasn’t drinking the Kool-Aid enough. So, I went head first into it.

Three months later; I think I am more confused on what to feel or think I should keep doing anymore.

The Dilemma

For the last three months, I went full in on integrating AI into my workflow. I continually stayed up to speed with the latest agent skills, best practices, and adopted multiple different tools to “enhance” my productivity. I fell into the trap of using this model this week, a different model the next week, and repeat. Sometimes, I felt like I spent more time tuning every single skill to match my way of talking, coding, and just doing work. Sure, I was cruising and I felt that high everyone talks about. I was reading each line of code, I was validating before approving, and I made sure to run security checks on all the dependencies I used. There were projects I had been pushing off that I finally started (and finished) in just a few days. These were personal projects that I was never going to publish, but it still gave me joy to finally tap into it.

Around the same time of SCALE 23x, something happened in my brain. I realized that I was missing something. I absolutely LOVE writing code and building things. Putting together an idea by hand, seeing it fail, fail again, and then succeed sends such a rush that I know other engineers experience but cannot put a word to it. I was proud of what I made, knowing it wasn’t perfect, but that I made it. This was all self taught, no formal education (see my LinkedIn page if you don’t believe me), and I got here with the help of my mentors and my support group.

Integrating AI into my workflow made me feel absolutely guilty. Was I becoming lazy? Would I lose everything I worked towards just because I became dependent on these tools? How would others look at me if I said I used AI to help me with a project. Would people stop supporting the tools I make? This was then followed with the fear of being left behind, being out matched, and perhaps made irrelevant for dialing back my usage. Dialing back to simply using AI to help troubleshoot rather than to do any coding. Am I going to lose my job because someone else who has less experience than me can produce code that “does the job” and is paid less than me? Is this a time for me to change my profession?

What has to give?

If you are like me and have asked yourself those questions daily, I feel your pain. We take pride in our work and when that is threatened, we either stand our ground or change with the times. Can we maybe do both? That is what I hope ends up happening.

Call these hot takes but I think I feel safe to say that we cannot ignore that AI has changed the way we do our jobs. We have to accept this, adapt, and move on. That doesn’t mean we throw away the joy we get when we code things by hand like “savages” or, dear god, READ DOCUMENTATION. We can still do that! How? I don’t know, you have to figure that out yourself! But we can still find joy in the work we do by tackling complex issues with the aid of AI tooling. We can still be the final say in what gets shipped and what doesn’t. I do not care if you wrap it up and put a bow on it; if you are shipping code you didn’t even look at then you are absolutely responsible for understanding why your latest social app leaked your patron’s personal identification or address.

I cringe at the word “Vibe Coding” even more now that I use AI myself. I am not against engineers vibe coding their personal projects or tools that make their lives easier. I do care when that garbage leaks out and now there are millions of people downloading your ultimate AI assistant to control every aspect of your life. What could possible go wrong with that? It is not like it has access to your browsing history or your photos….

Vibe code away and show all your crypto bros the latest golfing app you made to perfect your swing while all the former-employees you laid off are still looking for jobs amongst the pool of talent impacted by short sighted business decisions.

Moving forward

I have accepted that coding agents will write faster than me. They can complete various tasks in shorter periods of time because they are not human. They do not have a family depending on your income to feed them, cloth them, and pay for the roof over their heads. I will give them the “win” there.

But what I will not do is let this take away the joy I get in the work I do. There is a way for me to still build and do it faster, without losing a grip on my skills. It will require discipline for me to make decisions of “is this something I can just let the agent do or do I want to do this myself.” I can still do things these agents can’t-they do not have tribal knowledge or know about an issue we saw three months ago that we fixed by doing x, y, z. They won’t know how to handle a request from a director in one department vs another. We still have an upper hand on them as humans. That is not something they can take away from us (yet-iRobot anyone?)

So, if you are like me and cannot keep up with all the latest “best practices” or latest tools, it is okay. There will be people that try to and it will bode well for them at first. However, that path is not sustainable and will ultimately lead to burnout. Ask me how I know.

There is a middle ground, you just have to define it. Keep true to your skills, stand your ground, and make it secure, no mistakes…..