Kent Beck warns coders: learn people skills now

coders need – Software engineering legend Kent Beck says AI is making traditional coding talent feel more vulnerable—because companies increasingly need engineers to review and manage AI output, coordinate with stakeholders, and lean into empathy and communication they ofte

Software engineers have always been prized—until the AI boom started rearranging what “prized” actually means.

On an episode of “The Pragmatic Engineer,” software engineering legend Kent Beck delivered a blunt starting point: “We’re kind of assholes, sometimes.”

He wasn’t talking about code quality. He was pointing to workplace behavior—qualities engineers often don’t train for early, like emotional regulation and empathy. “We don’t necessarily have good emotional regulation skills. We don’t have natural empathy,” he said. “We’re oftentimes more direct than other people can easily handle.” Those traits. he suggested. can be “hideous” in the day-to-day reality of working with other humans—an issue that now has real career consequences as AI reshapes how companies build.

As AI writes more code, companies aren’t just treating engineers as line-by-line builders. They increasingly want engineers to review, direct, and manage AI-generated work rather than produce every line themselves. Vibecoding has become a common practice in the software industry. letting seasoned coders build prototypes more quickly while enabling non-coders to turn their ideas into pilots.

That shift is changing careers, but it’s also changing job design. It’s blurring the line between engineering and product work. Anthropic’s head of growth. Amol Avasare. said engineers using tools like Claude Code are seeing their productivity increase by two to three times—putting new pressure on product managers and designers.

With AI-driven acceleration, companies often lean on engineers to take on more product management tasks. Beck said Anthropic is already asking engineers on smaller projects to act as “mini PMs,” taking responsibility not just for code but also for stakeholder coordination and cross-functional work.

In this new mix, the “most valuable engineers” aren’t only the ones who can write and debug—they’re the ones who can pair technical chops with product judgment and the people skills that keep collaboration from falling apart.

Beck described the requirement for programmers to learn people skills as “a cosmic practical joke.” When people start coding. he said. they’re told the solution is to learn everything about computers. Then comes the reality check: “And then oops sorry there’s this whole human side and your ability to affect change in the world is gated by your ability to communicate and empathize.”.

The stakes are increasingly practical. As companies rely on AI to move faster, the work doesn’t disappear—it shifts toward managing output, coordinating with colleagues, and communicating decisions in ways that other teams can actually absorb.

Kent Beck AI coding software engineers people skills emotional regulation empathy Anthropic Amol Avasare Claude Code vibecoding mini PMs product engineering