I just moved to a new team in my company that prides itself on being "AI-First". The work is a relatively new project that was stood up by a small team of two developers (both of whom seem pretty smart) in the last 4 months. Both acknowledged that some parts of their tech stack, they just don't at all understand (next.js frontend). The backend is a gigantic monorepo of services glued together.

The manager & a senior dev on my first day told me to "Don't try to write code yourself, you should be using AI". I got encouraged to use spec-driven development and frameworks like superpowers, gsd, etc.

I'm definitely moving faster using AI in this way, but I legitimately have no idea what the fuck I am doing. I'm making PRs I don't know shit about, I don't understand how it works because there is an emphasis on speed, so instead of ramping up in a languages / technologies I've never used, I'm just shipping a ton of code I didn't write and have no real way to vet like someone who has been working with it regularly and actually has mastered it.

This time last year, I was still using AI, but using it as a pair programming utility, where I got help learn to things I don't know, probe topics / concepts I need exposure to, and reason through problems that arose.

I can't control the direction of how these tools are going to evolve & be used, but I would love if someone could explain to me how I can continue to grow if this actually is the future of development. Because while I am faster, the hope seems to be AI / Agents / LLMs will only ever get better and I will never need to have an original thought or use crtical thinking.

I have just about 4 years of professional experience. I had about 10 - 12 months of the start of my career where I used google to learn things before LLMs became sole singular focus.

I wake up every day with existential dread of what the future looks like.