Remember when we were all convinced that AI was going to make software engineers obsolete? That particular prediction hasn't exactly aged well.
According to Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn's chief economic opportunity officer and author of the new book Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, the story of AI and work is far more nuanced - and actually more hopeful - than the doomsday headlines suggested.
Less coding, more building
Speaking to Fast Company, Raman makes a point that reframes the whole conversation. Software engineers aren't being replaced by AI. They're being freed up. "Software engineers are spending less time coding," he explains, "but now they're getting to build things in a way they couldn't before."
That's a meaningful distinction. When you're no longer buried in repetitive code, you can zoom out. You can think bigger, collaborate more directly with clients, and tackle problems that actually require a human brain - the kind involving context, creativity, and judgment.
Human ingenuity as the wildcard
What the initial wave of AI panic underestimated was something pretty fundamental: people adapt. The tech observers who predicted a scarcity of software engineers didn't fully account for how quickly professionals would find new ways to stay essential. It turns out that when a tool takes something off your plate, you don't just sit back - you expand into the space it creates.
This is the throughline in Raman's thinking. The workers who are thriving aren't the ones fighting AI or ignoring it. They're the ones using it to do more interesting work than they could manage before.
What this means for the rest of us
You don't have to be a software engineer for this to apply to you. Across industries, the pattern is similar - AI handles the repetitive and the routine, which pushes humans toward higher-order thinking, relationship-building, and creative problem-solving. The question worth sitting with is: what parts of your job could AI absorb, and what would that free you up to do better?
Raman's broader message, as outlined in his book, is essentially one of openness - staying curious, staying adaptable, and resisting the urge to see AI as a threat to outrun rather than a tool to work with. In a landscape that's changing fast, that mindset might be the most valuable skill of all.
