[joshuanapoli]

I think that AI will let us make better progress outside of our narrow expertise.

So entrepreneurial activities will be easier and more common. On the other hand, there will be relatively fewer opportunities for specialized consultants. Contractors and consultants should be able to solve bigger problems rather than working in narrow specialties.

Teams and companies should have fewer members, since fewer specialties are needed. So they will probably need more contractors to move things along when there is a lot of work to do.

[gnz11]

Why wouldn’t AI handle the work of the contractors?

[joshuanapoli]

For the time being, AI doesn’t have good access to a lot of things: customers, information in 3rd party systems, etc. Even when we give access (with MCP, for example), current AI has trouble locating the right information to solve a problem.

So I still need an engineer to find out why the distributed system isn’t performing correctly, or to create a new component that is coherent with the rest of the existing UI. The difference is that any particular engineer will find more success tackling a wider range of goals.

[muzani]

Lots of people don't dare do things in production, even the ones with some other specialized technical experience.