What are mid-career engineers doing about AI, according to Dimitri?

Dimitri describes about 20 peers in their mid-forties at companies like Google, Amazon and Meta. Roughly a third are holding on to well-paid big-tech jobs without knowing what comes next. Another third are pursuing a solo unicorn, one strong engineer with AI standing in for dozens of others, mostly started in the second quarter of this year. The last third plan to leave and run AI-powered development shops that build apps for small businesses.

• Dimitri stresses that a sample of 20 is small and that results from the solo ventures are not in yet.
• Dimitri says he sees no obviously better strategy than these three for engineers in his cohort.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on A Life Engineered (2026-10-19). Read the whole episode summary →

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