Freefall – When Coding Stopped Being the Hard Part

Freefall – When Coding Stopped Being the Hard Part

I recently ran an interview where the candidate solved the problem perfectly. Six months ago, I would have hired them on the spot. This time, I didn’t. Because I realized I was testing for something that is no longer hard.

AI can now generate that kind of code in seconds. So we introduced it into our teams expecting everything to move faster. Some engineers became dramatically faster. Others didn’t change at all. Same tools. Same team. Completely different results. This talk is about what actually changed inside teams, why the transition feels messier than it looks, and what’s the part of our jobs that became much harder.