What do I mean by some software devs are "ngmi"?

At "an oh fuck moment in time", I closed off the post with the following quote.

N period on from now, software engineers who haven't adopted or started exploring software assistants, are frankly not gonna make it. Engineering organizations right now are split between employees who have had that "oh fuck" moment, are leaning into software assistants and those who have not.

People have asked me to expand. So let's do it.

This is a tale about seven fruits. Seven fruits who work at a company and how the shifts in the software industry by AI will affect all companies and their employees.

It really doesn't matter what company, as the productivity benefits that are delivered by LLMs and agentic software development are going to rapidly change employee performance metrics dynamics within all companies - all at once. AI has been commoditized and can be purchased with a credit card.

At this company we have seven software developers, and the company does six-monthly employee performance review cycles.

Nearly all corporate companies use a Vitality curve. Some companies force the distribution; others do not. Performance season closes and here's the results represented as a tier-list (rather than as a bell-curve - as for the purposes of story telling the distribution doesn't matter).

Lemon doesn't make it, well, because they are a lemon.

Orange and Strawberry are shocked to receive such a low employee rating.

Motivated to learn, grow and determined to find an edge they stumble upon new techniques that enable them to do 16x the work output of everyone else - LLMs and AI powered Code Editors.

Apple and Grape - who historically have been top performers at the company are well aware of these tools but have rejected them. Being prototypical early adopters of technology, they tried them a year ago and found that it didn't help and thus are now stuck in the disbelief chasm.

When Apple and Grape see the new generation of early adopters that utilise the tools sing praises, they dismiss it as just hype. Missing the point that the tools and foundational AI models have improved, are getting better every single day and that today is different than yesterday.

6 months wizzes on by, and at the next performance cycle, Apple and Grape are at the bottom of the tier list, whilst Orange is on top. Strawberry has climbed in rankings.

Through careful skills development, Orange has found a way to out-deliver and become even more effective in shipping software features with a low defect rate.

Banana is shocked, takes notice of Orange's and Strawberry's ranking change and starts to invest in personal development. Orange continues to refine its skills, whilst Apple starts on the journey of going all-in on LLMs

In the next performance cycle, the results are predictable...

Another performance cycle happens. Grape failed to adapt to the changes within the industry and is no longer with the company.

Now, the shocking lesson for Grape is that it's not just the company they were working for that has been changing at breakneck speed to adapt to new emerging threats to business models. It's every company – the software industry has changed.

Seemingly overnight. Companies are now looking for X years of programming LLMs (not just consuming them) - skills that Grape does not possess.

This tale isn't about any particular company, it's about the raging AI bull that's been unleashed which enables anyone, to do anything.

You may not believe me, but I'll leave you with a ponderoo...

Over the last month, I've caught up with founders who have already been implementing the above for over a year now. The founders didn't intend to slash their workforce; it just happened naturally - people self-selected out of the new AI+tools first direction - which works for now but the places to turn to will soon diminish, fast.

Founders have discovered that the tools do indeed work, and AI enables a path to do more, faster, with less. I strongly recommend that developers get out of the bubble of speaking with other developers and instead start having discussions with technical founders.

The moral of the story? Don't fall asleep at the wheel on this one. Invest in yourself - if you’re a high-agency person, there’s never been a better time to be alive...

I suspect there's not going to be mass-layoffs for software developers at Companies due to AI, instead there what we will see is a natural attrition between those who invest in themselves right now and those who do not.

ps. socials @ https://x.com/GeoffreyHuntley/status/1887793735129563475