The most conservative way to build a career as a software developer is 1) to be practical and effective at problem solving but 2) not to treat all existing code as a black box. 1 means that as a conservative developer you should generally use PostgreSQL or MySQL (or whatever existing database), Rails or .NET (or whatever existing framework), and adapt code from Stack Overflow or LLMs. 2 means that you're curious and work over time to better understand how web servers and databases and operating systems and the browser actually work so that you can make better decisions for your own problems as you adapt other people's code and ideas.
Zooming out, coding via LLM is not fundamentally different from coding with Rails or coding by perusing Stack Overflow. It's faster and more direct but it's still potentially just a human mindlessly adapting existing code.
The people who were only willing to look at existing frameworks and libraries and applications as black boxes were already not the most competitive when it came to finding and retaining work. And on the other hand, the most technically interesting companies always wanted to hire developers who understood fundamentals because they're 1) operating at such a scale that the way the application is written matters or they're 2) building PostgreSQL or MySQL or Rails or .NET or Stack Overflow or LLMs, etc.
The march of software has always been to reduce the need for (ever larger sizes of) SMBs (and teams within non-SMBs) to hire developers to solve problems or increase productivity. LLMs are part of that march. That doesn't change that at some point companies (or teams) need to hire developers because the business or its customer base has become too complex or too large.
The jobs that were dependent on fundamentals of software aren't going to stop being dependent on fundamentals of software. And if more non-developers are using LLMs it's going to mean all the more stress on tools and applications and systems that rely on fundamentals of software.
All of this is to say that if you like doing software development, I don't think interesting software development jobs are going to go away. So keep learning and keep building compilers and databases and operating systems and keep looking for companies that have compiler and database and operating system products, or companies with other sorts of interesting problems where fundamentals matter due to their scale.
LLMs and your career pic.twitter.com/lxu1HLF2LC
— Phil Eaton (@eatonphil) January 19, 2026