Build what the customer needs

Reading Anthropic's modelling of economic scenarios made me reflect on how quickly perceptions have changed in this space.

A lot of fields are being impacted by AI, but the impact on coding has been much more turbulent. I was in the EdTech space, so I saw this first-hand.

Pre-Covid, and even up until 2022/23, there were droves of people lining up to become software developers, with the coding bootcamp segment hitting record revenues. In 2024, it all came crashing down, almost to an abrupt stop, and it wasn't long before you started hearing about people going back to their previous jobs.

A big part of the software developer pool focused exclusively on coding. Many are still holding on to that and finding excuses for why AI couldn't do it. But the fact is, coding has mostly been solved, and if you've just been producing beautiful code, you need to adapt.

However, that doesn't mean pivoting into plumbing just yet. There are too many things left to build, and we still need great minds to do that.

If you observe the current trends, you can already see where demand is shifting. You may see a boom in Product Engineering and Forward Deployed Engineering roles. The common denominator in both is the focus on the customer.

If you can learn to build what the customer needs, not just what the ticket says, you should be set.

---

Originally posted on LinkedIn.