About a year ago, I was working for a large SaaS company. My perception was that everybody could sense AI was going to massively disrupt us in a negative way, but nobody could say that in public. The company pressed forward, trying to rebrand itself as an AI company, hosting conferences about this new "agentic" world and how we were leaders in it. Meanwhile, our AI products were undifferentiated and shallow, not selling well, and reviewed poorly. I felt that if I stuck around here, I myself was also going to be destroyed by the impending AI tidal wave. If I left, at least I might have a chance to surf the wave. So I resigned.
I spent the last year freelancing and trying to lean into AI tools as much as I could to understand what this new world means for me. I built a SaaS product for a niche industry that required high compliance and a gruelling audit process, which I'm proud to say we made it through and that we delivered. I've built custom software for some local businesses. All of this using Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, whatever else. I've learned a lot about using AI, including some embarrassing lessons in the audit process (don't use AI when you're trying to build trust with an auditor) - I'll share those in another post.
Something has changed, though. I see it referred to as the "November moment" in some people's posts, when we passed some inflection point with AI coding. I am busier than ever freelancing. Everyone wants a custom app to solve their business problem, and it's the easiest it has ever been. Businesses I'm talking to are excited, because for the first time in history they can eliminate giant stacks of their internal tools with a custom built application that does exactly what they want and frees them of the burden of trying to create custom SalesForce objects or whatever nonsense.
You'd think I'd be happy about this, but it's actually the opposite. I feel this is a short window of time where what I know about AI, and what the business world knows about AI, is open to arbitrage. But for how long? Last week, I signed up a local tour provider to build an app for them. We budgeted 12 weeks for it (our standard timing for initial builds). It was done in about 3 hours. Claude Code essentially one shotted it, and now I'm just going through making sure it works right and fixing tiny bugs. How long until these motivated folks just do this themselves?
I feel my skillset I've built over the past 10 years, and the value I provide to others and ultimately what provides me a sense of purpose and meaning, slipping through the cracks. It is a bad feeling. I am anxious about my purpose and ability to create income. I try to remind myself that I'll figure it out - just like we humans have always done, but I don't trust that yet.