I've Coded for 15 Years. Now I'm Obsolete.

My brain tells me: “Why the hell would you code by hand when you can just push a button and get the same result?”

And the worst part is, it’s right.

I’ve been coding for 15 years. And for the first time in my life, I feel unnecessary.

Today I want to talk about something that’s happening to thousands of developers. Something nobody wants to say out loud.

Quick intro for anyone who doesn’t know me. My name is Sergio Ruiz, also known as Serudda with two D’s, here on YouTube and everywhere else. Welcome to my channel, where we talk about the tech industry and a bit about life.

A few days ago I ran into a video by a developer named Mo Bitar. It hit me hard. 12 minutes that sum up exactly what a lot of us are feeling.

What did I turn into? Overnight I went from being the person who built everything from scratch. I lived the process, felt it, struggled with it, got frustrated, got excited. And then overnight I just became an auditor. An auditor of machines.

Right now I feel like software got industrialized. Soda bottles rolling past me on a line. I’m standing at the assembly belt and my only job is making sure the caps are screwed on right.

One bottle goes by, I check the cap. Another goes by, I check the cap. And so on with the next one. And the next. And the next.

What’s the point of coding now? What’s the point of building product if I just became one more link in the production chain?

But the problem isn’t just that I became an auditor. The problem is what all of this leads to.

The whole craft of building software is gone. What used to take months to build as a well made feature now takes you 5 minutes. You throw everything into a grinder and get a result that works. Sure. But there was no effort in the process anymore.

How the hell am I supposed to sell you something like that?

And fair enough, some people will say: “Seru, but software is just another product we sell.” And that’s true.

But there are people who open fancy restaurants with trained chefs who build a whole themed menu. Every quarter they study to bring in new ingredients, new dishes from other cities, other countries, to give their customers a unique experience.

And then there are others who just buy a hot dog cart, grab the sausages from the supermarket, dump three sauces on top, and sell it to you for two cents.

But I didn’t come into this world just to stack up cash. I think you have to find a balance between making enough money for a stable life and finding some happiness in what you do. The thing that makes you want to get up and say “ugh, today I have to work on this.”

Van Schneider put it perfectly in this tweet: “Some people play video games with cheats and still have fun doing it.” “There are also car salesmen who sell cars and don’t care about the people or the cars.” “It’s just a different way of looking at life.”

And it’s not just about the product. It’s about what building it did to YOU.

I don’t want to romanticize the process of building software, not at all. Just like a lot of trades got automated and lost that artistic side, that craftsman’s spirit, we’re clearly going through the same transition other trades went through. Carpentry, cooking, tailoring.

It’s normal for those of us who’ve been doing this for years to feel this way. And a lot of us weren’t just doing it because “I need to learn to code to get a job and put food on the table.” Plenty of us have been at this for a long time.

Yes, we did it for money, of course. But beyond the money, we gave up our free time to build something. To bring a product to life, to watch other people solve their problems with something you’d just created.

The whole process felt magical. You’d sketch it out, draw it, code it, study, learn a ton along the way. You’d ship the release and watch people actually use your product. You’d run back to code again to add that one feature people were begging for.

Now anyone can build something, good or bad.

So that part of me, the part that got me up every day excited to build my own pieces of software, not just to solve my own problems but eager to show them to the world, that part got killed. Killed without asking.

A lot of us, believe it or not, weren’t in this industry just to land a job. A lot of us did it because we genuinely loved coding.

Francesco adds to this from a more technical angle.

“For decades, the friction of programming was a forcing function.” “Writing code was slow, so you had to be deliberate.” “You couldn’t start five features at once because you physically couldn’t implement them fast enough.” “The limitation was actually a gift. It forced you to prioritize.”

But before I keep venting, there’s something we need to admit. How full of ourselves we were.

I remember when I worked at Eden. When it was just starting out, still an early stage startup. The job was brutal. There were only two of us on frontend. We were pulling all nighters, 10pm meetings.

It was insane. We worked like maniacs for a month or two. And of course I burned out.

But I had enough confidence to sit down with the founders and tell them: “I’m going to take a few months off because I’m burned out. But I’ll be back.”

And funny enough, that’s exactly what happened. Eight months went by. The founder wrote to me asking if I’d rested enough, if I wanted to come back.

I renegotiated my terms all over again. Started part time with a raise. Then went back full time. Even renegotiated my stock options.

Total nerve, looking back on it now. If I tried that today, they’d throw me out and tell me: “You’re not some little star anymore. Now we’ve got OpenClaw and it does your job better than you do.”

Let’s be honest. The lid’s off, let’s just say it. We really did think we were rock stars.

Callebtc offers a brutal counterpoint in his tweet. “You were always just a code monkey with a paycheck high enough to make you believe your individual craftsmanship mattered to someone.” “It doesn’t matter to anyone but you.”

But beyond the ego and the nostalgia, there’s something happening on a level we don’t even see.

It’s impossible not to feel anxious. I have to open Twitter because I’m trying to build a voice on the platform. But my feed is so deep in the AI bubble that it’s overwhelming. People for it, people against it. Both sides making valid points. Who do I even believe?

On top of that, the industry forces you to use AI excessively because companies roll it out to make you “more efficient.” But that efficiency isn’t turning into more free time. It’s the opposite. Exhaustion and the feeling of being overworked has gone up for everyone.

JL Hortelano put it well in his tweet: “77% of employees who used AI said it increased their workload. AI doesn’t give you time back. It expands the boundaries of what you feel like you should be doing.”

Harvard published a study that surveyed almost 1,500 workers. They found that 14% already experience what’s called “AI brain fry.” Mental exhaustion from supervising AI tools. And the impact is strongest in technical fields: software, IT, finance.

Supervising multiple AI outputs creates 12% more mental fatigue and 33% more decision fatigue. And exhausted employees are 10% more likely to quit.

And an MIT study hooked electrodes up to 54 people while they used ChatGPT to write. The ones who used AI showed 47% less neural connectivity. Their brains weren’t working less. They were literally shutting down in the areas responsible for critical thinking and creativity.

Francesco backs this up from experience. “I end every day exhausted, not from the work itself, but from managing the work. Six open branches, four half written features, two ‘quick fixes’ that turned into rabbit holes, and a growing feeling that I’m completely losing the thread.”

And then you think: okay, the solution is to only use it for the boring stuff. I’ll handle the hard parts, hand off the tedious ones to AI. Right?

No. That’s not how it goes. That’s the trap we fell into.

We started using it for repetitive tasks. But when you have a tool that powerful, using it only for boring stuff doesn’t make sense. If it gives you 200% power, you’re not going to settle for using 40% of it. You’re going to want to use all 200%.

Honestly, if it can give you 210%, even better (especially if I’m paying good money for the thing).

I can’t work without it. I don’t want to work without it. Sometimes I think I can’t live without it. Quitting isn’t even an option anymore.

Which is exactly what a functioning addict would say. We dress up the damage to our brains with the blanket of “productivity.” We keep telling ourselves: “But I’m just faster…” Like a mantra that justifies the dependency.

Being fast is the symptom. Not proof that we’re fine.

JL Hortelano drives it home with this: “There’s no easy middle ground. Once you start using these tools seriously, your brain stops wanting to go back to the effort. It’s not that you can save the hard stuff for yourself and delegate the boring parts. It’s all or nothing.”

AI killed the craftsman in us. And honestly, I don’t know how to get it back.

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Hope you liked it. Thanks for watching. See you in the next one.