The Conductor Developer

Martin Fowler's site carries a thought from Rachel Laycock about what AI is actually changing in software development. It's not coding speed or skill. It's human attention. The best developers today spend less time writing code and more time orchestrating multiple AI agents—sometimes eight or more—in parallel. Each moment, they decide which agent handles what, listen for what doesn't fit, and shape the work as it unfolds. Laycock calls them conductors, not programmers. A great conductor doesn't play every instrument. They hold the whole system in their head. Here's the catch: we train engineers for individual execution, not coordination and cognitive load management. Those are skills we usually teach executives. The industry is redesigning its tools, but the job description hasn't shifted yet.

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