𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗪𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹
The best engineers are doing work they are bad at.
They are not bad at coding. They are incredible at it. But they stopped doing what they do best. They drifted into a new role without noticing.
I did this for too long during a large scale repo migration. I used Claude Code heavily and only realized the shift when I looked at my time logs.
The work has changed. Preparation is the work.
You do not spend your time writing code or debugging anymore. You spend your time setting up the problem.
If you prepare well, the AI nails the task on the first try. If you do not, you spend three hours fighting an AI that builds the wrong thing. You waste your best skill, which is thinking through problems, on cleaning up mistakes.
We are no longer writing code. We are curating context.
Think like an air traffic controller. The controller does not fly the planes. But every plane depends on them to land safely. They sequence the planes. They manage the airspace. They prevent collisions.
Claude handles the flying. You handle the coordination. You decide what context to load, which files to use, and what order to follow.
You are not paid to write every line of code. You are paid to know which 5% of context matters right now.
How to manage this:
• Scope tasks extremely small. One task per prompt. One major change per PR. Build the skeleton first. • Do one task manually first. Do not take shortcuts. This shows you where the AI struggles and what context it actually needs. • Tell the AI exactly which layer it is working in. If you do not specify the architecture, the AI will guess. It will guess wrong. • Use reference patterns. Once a task works, include the file path and line numbers so the AI sees the real code. • Track mistakes. When the AI fails, tell it to update its own rules. Turn your lessons into a playbook.
Do not ask an AI to plan and implement in the same prompt. Ask it to output a plan first. Review the plan. Then tell it to execute.
If the session becomes messy or the AI starts ignoring your rules, kill the session. Start fresh with a clean prompt. It is cheaper than fighting a broken implementation.
You used to be measured by how much code you wrote. Now you are measured by how well you prepare.
The engineers winning with AI are not the best prompters. They are the best preparers.
Source: https://dev.to/alextongme/youre-wasting-your-best-engineering-skill-191m