🧩 The More Code AI Writes, the Harder It Becomes to Hire Engineers.

🧩 The more code AI writes, the harder it becomes to hire engineers. It sounds like a paradox, but I'm increasingly convinced that it's true.

The logic everyone expected: models are writing better, so fewer people are needed, and hiring should be easier—hire anyone, AI will fill the gaps. Musk already calls this the "stockfish moment," when even the best developer can't write code at the level of AI-generated code. It would seem the value of a specific engineer is declining.

In practice, I see the opposite. When writing code is almost free, the bottleneck shifts—from "writing" to "deciding what to write and why." I've mentioned this before: in one stream, an entrepreneur fed a poorly described task into a model, ran it for 16 hours, and complained that "models are getting dumber," while his developer partner decomposed, cleaned the code, and only saw progress. The difference isn't in the model. The difference is in the person behind it.

And this is where traditional hiring breaks down. Formally, there are more candidates—everyone now "works with AI." But distinguishing someone who truly holds the architecture and takes ownership from someone who beautifully recites their stack and vibe-codes randomly has become harder than a year ago. Resumes lie even more eagerly (we recently discussed "advisors" who outright suggest embellishing CVs—"the market is tough, everyone does it"). And interviews in the "run LeetCode" style filter out the wrong people.

This is exactly the skill we've been talking about throughout the course: not being the best model, but being the ultimate solution—being able to distinguish tasks and take initiative where needed. Only now, this is a criterion not for yourself, but for whom you invite to your team.

My friend Mike Volkov and his team at VAMI are precisely focused on this: selecting senior engineers for startups (AI, blockchain, fintech) and filtering based on this "ownership," not the beauty of a resume. Screening with recorded interviews, a tech block, a transparent picture of each candidate—founders get a ready team without months of HR routine.

If you're building a tech team and need hiring—contact Mike directly: @mikevolkov. And if you're a strong engineer and want to join an early startup with real ownership, not a corporate—reach out to him, there are positions available.

He also runs the channel @huntermikevolkov—it's all about hiring and teams in the AI era.

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