Some people got promoted because they are not good technically
Yes, this is true and it's called the Dilbert principle
Once I saw someone who broke prod twice in a quarter, so they moved him into management. No more prod to break.
It works, until your best people notice the title they're chasing is where you placed the ones who are not so good in their role.
That's the part of the Dilbert principle that costs you.
Image: Dilbert, by Scott Adams
Manager: We lost our best engineer today.
CEO: The one leading payments?
Manager: Yes.
CEO: Did another company offer more money?
Manager: No.
CEO: Then why leave?
Manager: He said he was tired of fixing the same production issues every week.
CEO: That’s part of the job.
Manager: He didn’t mind fixing issues. He minded that nobody wanted to fix the root cause.
CEO: We prioritized speed.
Manager: He wanted quality.
CEO: So he left over that?
Manager: He left because he felt like a firefighter, not an engineer.
Good engineers don’t just want to solve problems.
They want to eliminate them.
Honestly, this is the most accurate diagram I've seen.
Waterfall: You plan for 18 months and deliver exactly what nobody needs anymore.
Agile: You deliver something usable at every step, but the CEO keeps asking, "Where's the car?"
AI: You get the car on day one. It has six wheels, the doors are on backwards, and it has a rocket launcher. You spend more time making it yours than actually "building"; it's shaping. owning. verifying. That's what the best AI developers do now. They don't build. They shape and own.
Black Mirror S8E1: In 2027, developers are allocated a daily Claude token allowance by the government. A junior dev burns through his entire month's supply trying to centre a div. His family starve. He is forced to write the code himself. He can't. Society collapses.
Saying not knowing how to code gives you an advantage in building software (thanks to AI) is like saying not knowing anything about filmmaking gives you an advantage in making films (thanks to having a smartphone + apps to edit stuff)
Ignore this stuff and keep learning+building