It never was.
It was a disruption waiting to happen.
As software engineers, we never got paid to just code. It was always building products that our users use and pays for that directly or indirectly.
And that is clearer than ever.
Vibe coding made that clear.
Now we are still needed, just not to write code but to still be the guardian around what code AI is writing.
In the past, we needed to monitor junior colleagues so their code doesn’t break production. So we used to build processes around what they are writing.
It’s still the same.
There are two important skills now: either you build AI so it performs better, or you consume AI in such way that it performs better.
In my opinion, if you can be the one to use vibe coding/AI assisted coding (whatever you want to call it) and somehow ensure it doesn’t break production, you are the most valuable asset.