)
)
Spend about eleven seconds on LinkedIn and you’ll see approximately 731 posts about the fate of developers. Somehow, they all say one of two things. One post says they’re finished. The next says they just press a button now and an app falls out.
We reckon there’s a whole story somewhere betwixt the extremes.
So we dragged Ali, our Senior Android Developer, into the fun. Not only has he doomscrolled his way through the developer’s obituary, but he’s also lived through the shift himself, and he has thoughts (as is his wont). We skipped the hot takes and went straight to the source: what going AI native actually feels like from the developer’s chair.
Ali’s first reaction: Nope.
When Duncan announced the Factory Rebuild in April and told the whole of Cube we’d be building around Claude, Ali’s knee-jerk reaction was to go on the defensive. “Corporate tells you to do something, you immediately go, nope, I’m not doing that.”
Which, fair. Ali’s wanted to build software since he was six, when his cousin brought home the family’s first computer. And the bit he loved most was the bit Claude was swanning in to take: the puzzle.
“You know how when you do maths problems, and then you solve it, how much joy that is?” That’s how Ali describes the manual development process.
Duncan, our CEO and the person who made the call to go AI-native, doesn’t pretend otherwise. “It is a direct attack on the skill sets of developers,” he says, “it’s front and centre.” Kev, our Engineering Manager, watched the rest of Cube get shiny new superpowers while the developers got “a whole new job description”.
So Ali did what a lot of developers are doing right now. He grumbled, loudly and often (“Why do I have to do this? I don’t want to do this. The old ways were so much better”).
Then he went ahead and did it anyway.
)
A swan song for the old way
Let’s pour one out for our fallen homie, the old way of working, because hot damn, what a time that was. A ticket, a problem, a few hours of head-scratching, then that glorious click when it finally comes together.
Ali barely writes code now. He plans, Claude plans, he fixes Claude’s plan, Claude builds, he tests, and then he reviews. The puzzle in the middle, the bit that made a six-year-old fall for computers, now belongs to Claude.
So some evenings he opens his own laptop and writes code by hand, the old-school way, no bot butting in. Like a dirty little secret.
“It’s like, ah yes, this is what good feels like.”
Ali Rezaee, Senior Android Developer, 3 Sided Cube
If you believed the internet, this is where the story ends: developer loses the bit he loves, cue the sad violin. But that’s not the whole enchilada, because devs are now in their personal growth era.
Throwing away the instructions
Kev has the perfect go-to metaphor for this shift… The Lego Movie. Emmet, the construction worker, only builds by following the instructions. The Master Builders look at a pile of bricks and just make something.
For years, developers worked like Emmet. “You have your Jira ticket, and it’s got all the instructions of that thing you’re going to build,” Kev says. “You go and build it, you get it delivered, yay, on to the next thing.” Now the job is the Master Builder bit: deciding what to make, and how it all fits together.
For Ali, that’s the scary part. “There is this whole bit where I’m the one who says, go build that. That I have no training in.” After years of feeling settled, he’s a junior again.
)
So he’s pushing himself well out of his comfort zone and teaching himself with events, conventions, groups he’d normally swerve, as well as reading up on how people in other fields work, to spot where he could help. He’s even dipped a toe into Figma (verdict: “it’s so hard, man”).
And it’s working. He’s built a bundle checker, an app reviewer, and a new version of our internal Bitrise app, which ticked along on his second monitor while he got on with client work. Big features don’t scare him anymore, because he’s not the one hand-building them.
He’s even turned into a bit of a software vigilante at home. Think the kid in The Sixth Sense, minus the creepy: instead of dead people, he sees things he could build for his family and friends.
What the internet’s getting wrong
Ali won’t pretend AI changes nothing.
“The problem isn’t if it can replace a whole person. But if it can reduce the work of a person so much that it no longer makes sense to have a full person doing that.” Ali Rezaee, Senior Android Developer, 3 Sided Cube
Duncan’s heard that one too. Someone messaged him on LinkedIn to point out he could now get rid of all his developers. “No, that’s not how the world works,” he says. He thinks it’s the opposite: “Developers arguably could be the most important people in companies now, because all companies become technical companies.”
Every business runs on software, and soon they’ll run on thousands of agents someone has to secure, deploy, and keep in line. That someone is a developer.
“I think the world’s going to need more technical people.” Duncan Cook, Founder and CEO, 3 Sided Cube
Duncan also points out that most of us are working harder than ever, so he’s still waiting for AI to take the job. Ali’s also seen it on his own projects: “The scope is bigger and the time is smaller.”
)
If you’re a developer reading this
What Ali, Kev and Duncan would tell you, six months in:
Feel it, then say it. Ali’s grumbling got him answers, not a telling off, and that kind of honesty is gold. Nobody can fix what nobody says.
Start on home turf. Try it on a product you know inside out, in test and staging where breaking things costs nothing. Kev’s job is giving developers permission to go forth and experiment for that exact reason.
Review the plan before the code. The cheapest place to catch Claude’s mistake is before it writes a single line.
Trust it as far as the risk allows. Internal tool? Let it run. Client app? Know every line.
Shut the laptop. One more prompt is properly addictive. Duncan’s advice: “Touch some grass.”
)
Would Ali go back?
We asked him straight: if there was a big red button that took everything back to March, would he press it?
“Yes,” he said. Then, a beat later: only if everybody else went back too. “If the world is using this and I’m not, I’m going to be left behind.”
Then we asked what he’d miss. He had to think about it.
Before all this, Ali was too tired after work to build anything for himself. Now his evenings have side projects in them again. He’s had to push himself way out of his comfort zone to get here, and some days he’s still out (“Okay, that’s it. I’m not doing this anymore. I’m out”), right up until he figures the next thing out.
“The part I would miss isn’t me doing less work. The part I would miss is me doing more work.” Ali Rezaee, Senior Android Developer, 3 Sided Cube
So, is everything awesome? Not everything. The job Ali trained for has changed for good, and he’s allowed to miss it. But the six-year-old who fell for computers didn’t go anywhere. He just stopped following the instructions.
Now he writes his own.
Straight from the Cubes
Want more of the low-down on how the Factory Rebuild has gone across the teams at Cube? Get the stories straight from the Cubes and catch up here:
You shall not pass, AI: meet the Gandalf of our Factory Rebuild
How a marketing team goes AI native (in an office full of developers)
Questions clients really ask when their software agency goes AI native
No code, no problem: how our Support team built their own AI tools
Will AI take the fun out of design? Our product designer's honest playbook
Disclaimer: We used AI in the process of writing this blog, but a human was still at the centre! We'd be poor advocates for going AI native if we didn't use AI to help write about it. The story is ours, the quotes are our team's own words, and every line got the human pass 💚
FAQs
Is AI going to replace software developers?
Probably not, but it does reshape the job. In our experience the risk isn’t one AI replacing a whole developer, it’s AI reducing the manual work enough that roles shift. Our Senior Android Developer now spends his time planning, directing and reviewing what AI builds rather than writing most of the code himself, and we’d argue developers get more important as every company becomes a technical one.
What does a software developer actually do when AI writes the code?
The job moves from building to directing. Instead of hand-writing solutions, the developer plans the work, reviews the AI’s plan, corrects it, lets it build, then tests and reviews the result. The skill shifts from writing code fast to making good decisions about what to build and how it fits together.
Is AI-generated code safe to use in real products?
Only with a developer who understands it. For low-risk internal tools, it’s fine to let AI run and not know every line. For client-facing products, where security and stability matter, a human still needs to know exactly what the code does before it ships.
How can developers adapt to working with AI?
Start where it’s safe and build up. Experiment on products you know well, in test and staging where mistakes cost nothing. Review the AI’s plan before it writes any code, trust it as far as the risk allows, and be honest when something isn’t working, the developers who speak up get answers, not blame.
Published on 15 October 2026, last updated on 15 October 2026