Carmack is, of course, 100% correct. But so is the student.
As someone obsessed with nuts and bolts coding, grinding on technical problems and cleverly eeking out performance, that type of career is sunsetting.
The role Carmack describes is one he is comfortable with because he has always been a product lead, even when he was a full-time coder. But in most organizations, that person is a product manager with social and personal skills, organization, and business sense.
For the best part of my career I was able to circumvent these social aspects of work for which my personality does not suit, and my philosophical perspectives on things like "business value" could be brushed aside as I dug into technical weeds.
Not just because of AI, but because of the power of computing, one-size-fits-all cloud pricing, and the perceived value of organizational understanding over that of raw performance, there is little room left for 'this type' of programmer. And the remaining space is ripe for people whose personality are suited to project manager roles to become the 'coders' Carmack references, not people like me.
I would posit the example of Carmack himself being unable (despite being IMO the greatest programmer of our generation and having all the resources and responsibility he wanted) at Meta, to make this kind of coding valuable for them.
As someone obsessed with nuts and bolts coding, grinding on technical problems and cleverly eeking out performance, that type of career is sunsetting.
The role Carmack describes is one he is comfortable with because he has always been a product lead, even when he was a full-time coder. But in most organizations, that person is a product manager with social and personal skills, organization, and business sense.
For the best part of my career I was able to circumvent these social aspects of work for which my personality does not suit, and my philosophical perspectives on things like "business value" could be brushed aside as I dug into technical weeds.
Not just because of AI, but because of the power of computing, one-size-fits-all cloud pricing, and the perceived value of organizational understanding over that of raw performance, there is little room left for 'this type' of programmer. And the remaining space is ripe for people whose personality are suited to project manager roles to become the 'coders' Carmack references, not people like me.