Don't call yourself a Software Engineer, you are an AI Enabled Engineer.

I can only imagine what it's like learning the skill of programming in this day and age. What does an average college class look like? What is the CS professor teaching? And students, how do you reconcile what you are learning vs the current job market?

I know if I was a student today, I would at least attempt to make connections on LinkedIn to prepare for a future where I would need those connections to get a job. But LinkedIn is not a real place. It might have been at one point. But it certainly isn't today. Everybody is an AI Engineer/Leverager/Prompter/Professional. If I wasn't in the industry, it would be real confusing. I see my ex-colleagues right there on LinkedIn, gainfully employed, yet still felt the need to update their titles.

We've worked together, I know their current role. Or at least I thought I knew. Now, that same role leverages AI in a way that has "enabled" them. The software engineers though, their role has remained the same while the entire marketing department has switched to AI first.

The software engineer is being left behind. The whole company is moving fast, yet the person writing the code using Claude, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, that person remains a mere Software Engineer. In some cases, this person even calls himself a Software Developer.

It reminds me of the days we used to call ourselves programmers. We reluctantly accepted the title of software engineer, feeling that imposter syndrome knowing that our code isn't as reliable as it looks. Patrick Mckenzie wrote something short of a manifesto to convince us to market ourselves as Software Engineers.

Yes, we were just building CRUD applications for our employers, maybe an expense tracker and accounting software here and there. It didn't feel very impressive. But companies didn't care about the technical elegance of our code. They were just happy to get such a valuable product that helped them save money and increase revenue.

It's not hard to see how an engineer can create business value in the real world. Software is eating the world after all, and everything runs on software today. When you call yourself a programmer, you undersell your competence and the value you create. You are a problem solver, you are a business contributor, and you directly affect the company's bottom line.

We don't need convincing anymore. We are Software Engineers.

But I think we missed the point of Patrick's essay. Maybe we stopped reading a little too early. Maybe we didn't read anything past the title. While I think his argument for not calling ourselves programmers is convincing, I think the meat of it was in the career advice he offered. What he was trying to convince us is that the outcome of our work is what's important, not the form.

To grow in this field of tech, the programming language and framework we used had little relevance. Instead, he talked about attending conferences and meetups, blogging and participating online, helping people, building professional relationships. These are things software engineers still avoid today and then wonder why they have a hard time getting the next job. He spoke on the value of communication as a skill, salary negotiation, navigating politics at work. Only those who read past the title benefitted from this advice. I know I did!

But Patrick is nowhere to be found in this new landscape we find ourselves in. AI is eating the world now. The workplace is transformed and there are no signs of ever going back. What is the career advice for the year 2026? If you are on LinkedIn, you must have noticed everyone is changing their work title. Is that what we are supposed to do? Did I miss the memo? I didn't read Patrick's latest manifesto, if there are any. But let me get ahead and suggest a few AI enabled titles to get you started.

If you were a backend engineer, you are now an AI Platform engineer. If you worked as DRE, you switch to Decision Intelligence Pipeline. If you ever updated the cron job, well, my friend, now you know about Autonomous Agents. If you had the word blockchain in your title, it's even easier. You can make a one to one replacement from blockchain to AI. /s

I'm still working on that list, but I don't think it will have the same impact as going from programmer to software engineer. The title was just semantics. The real value remains in the career advice. And I think Patrick's advice remains just as effective today as it did so many years ago. If you want to grow as a software engineer, don't worry about mastering React. Instead learn the fundamentals of programming and you will have no trouble navigating the different environments. Experience comes from working anyway.

Don't stop there. Meet people. Join those conferences, blog about your experience, help others, make those connections with people. In fact, send emails and reply to emails. Hop on a call. You will be surprised how much easier it is to get an interview when you aren't application #234 in a list of one thousand. In fact, you can close this tab and read Patrick's essay. Pretend that the title is "Don't call yourself a Software Engineer."

Ps: Patrick was not harmed in the making of this article. He wasn’t even consulted.

Ps2: I understand many won't read past this title as well, but that's just filtering at work.

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