Before AI, I didn’t know how each line of code worked for a project I was responsible for but the work was done by lower level developers. If I had a question about how they implemented something I would ask them to walk me through it and give feedback - just like my CTO did with me when I was responsible for leading major initiatives. It’s been over a decade (before AI) where my responsibilities were only what I personally coded.

I treat AI just like a mid level developer ticket taker.

To a first approximation, no one gets ahead in corporate America or BigTech (been there done that) because they “codez real gud” and pull tickets off of a Jira board.

In the last decade+, I’ve been a early technical hire to lead a major initiative by a new manager/director/CTO respectively and none of them were interested in asking me questions about my coding ability. We spoke like seasoned professionals.

Even at my job in BigTech in the cloud consulting department (full time, RSU earning blue badge employee specializing in cloud + app dev) it was behavioral where they wanted to determine if I “were smart and got things done” [1]. My job after that where I am now as a staff consultant (full time employee) leading projects the interview was concerned about getting work done on time, on budget, meets requirements and whether the customer was happy with my results. Absolutely no one in the value chain cares about hand crafted bespoke code as long as it meets functional and non functional (security, scalability, usability, etc) requirements.

Of course. You've had to give up and operate at the people level and it works because all those above you are doing that even more so.

...and you want to get ahead.

But you've made a trade off and to think otherwise would be a mistake. Someone else has to straddle the line that you're floating above and obviously part of your job is to get hold of such people.