# Sebastian Interview — How AI Is Reshaping Software Engineering

#source

## Source Metadata

- **Date:** pre-webinar conversation (date not stated)
- **Raw path:** `raw/sources/sebastian interview - conclusions and insights.md`
- **Source type:** interview (conclusions/insights), ~56 min. Built from a Whisper large-v3 + speaker-diarized transcript; quotes lightly cleaned.
- **Participants:** [[sebastian]] (founder of [[virtido|Virtido]], ~11-yr outsourcing firm) and [[eugene]] (interviewer; CV/embedded developer, content creator, harness-builder)
- **Ingestion date:** 2026-07-14

## Core Claims

- The debate over *whether* AI can write software is over — the whole game is **how you use it**. Cost of code → zero (see [[code-as-throwaway]]).
- **Teams shrink and roles merge:** the 8-person scrum team collapses to 2–3 who share coordination and agent-wrangling. See [[seniority-and-the-junior-squeeze]].
- **[[harness|"Bring your own harness"]] hits an enterprise wall** — compliance/liability force a company-managed resource. *That gap is the business opportunity.* See [[enterprise-ai-reality]].
- Pure coding skill is **leveled** by AI (20-yr veteran ≈ fresh grad output); judgment, [[product-ownership|ownership]], and **human [[connections-as-moat|connections]]** rise in value.
- **[[connections-as-moat|Relationships are the last non-commoditized asset]]** — the standout insight of the interview.
- Learn to **[[decoupling-identity-from-profession|decouple identity from profession]]** or "we will feel worthless in a couple of years."

## Key Evidence / Details

- **The question changed:** "It's not a question *if* AI can write software anymore — it's just a question of *how* you use it."
- **Team collapse:** no scrum master + PM + requirements engineer + big dev team — instead one coordination/ownership role + one or two agent-managers sharing roles.
- **Harness at enterprise scale:** Eugene demoed his own (Telegram-like UI, one agent per project, inter-agent messaging, per-agent memory, "done thinking" signal; tools: **Conductor** for git-worktree isolation + auto PRs/merges). Sebastian's counter: "bring-your-own-harness will not be the way forward… it has to be a company-managed resource." Enterprise reality: engineers on centrally-managed VMs, zero self-install (Roche SAP transformation ~1,200 engineers for years; banks moving from banned → cautious adoption "because it's just so good").
- **Seniors up, juniors out:** seniors know *where things go wrong* ("AI does the same mistakes humans do because it's trained on our mistakes"); the junior "yes… yes… allow for all future" habit is how "API keys are leaked, databases get dumped." "Give a junior… access to this almighty Claude and… the codebase — they will [wreck] it in two days."
- **Ownership story:** an engineer implemented "change your photo," ticked every acceptance criterion, but shipped it ugly (visible in the corner) because they never looked at the result. Reframe: stop thinking "what needs to be done" (tickets); think "what problem needs to be solved." "No one ever needed a programmer… people have problems that you are solving."
- **Planning debate:** colleague **Daniel** floated returning to waterfall; Sebastian disagrees — coordination overhead now exceeds the work. On a 2-person, ~1-day/week project he's *faster alone*. **Printer anecdote:** unfamiliar direct-printing protocol in Java (never written), 2-day deadline — went on-site, Claude Code solved it in ~30 min; his edge was *knowing how to instruct and verify*.
- **Connections (the moat):** in-person 2–4 days/week (lunches, events, conferences) wins business; sales agencies / cold calling / email / LinkedIn campaigns / content / SEO = "Big zero." A connection forms on the *second* meeting in *different* circumstances → recognition → trust → referrals. Be memorable in your **humanness** (renovating a house, two kids, a cat) — because everyone's AI output looks identical (riff: Virtido's `humans.verti.com` "human badge").
- **Other points:** open source grows as code becomes ~free (Eugene's cynical read: OSS is largely marketing); legacy niches persist (COBOL in banks — no training data); outsourcing economics — low-cost expectation selects for bad code ($10k/mo → excellent people; $800/mo won't beat a good hire).

## Connections

- **Entities:** [[sebastian]] · [[eugene]] · [[virtido]] · [[claude-code]] · [[hermes]] (Eugene references it among his tools)
- **Concepts:** [[harness]] · [[enterprise-ai-reality]] · [[seniority-and-the-junior-squeeze]] · [[product-ownership]] · [[connections-as-moat]] · [[decoupling-identity-from-profession]] · [[code-as-throwaway]]
- **Related sources:** [[2026-07-14-skills-based-on-git]] (harness definition + BYO-harness from the practitioner side) · [[2026-07-14-everything-we-knew-about-software-has-changed]] (identity baggage, code-as-throwaway)
- **Raw reference (not ingested):** `raw/sources/Ideas for webinar.md` echoes many of these (harness, connections, "describe problems not waterfalls," Daniel, HR search demo).

## Open Questions

- How does AI transform *huge* (~1,200-engineer, multi-year) enterprise programs? (Sebastian: doesn't know.)
- How do you unify wildly different personal workflows into one company process? (Eugene + collaborator spent a month, failed.)
- Concretely, how does an individual build a connections network from a standing start? (Principles offered; step-by-step unresolved — Eugene's ~6-month blocker.)

## Change Impact on Wiki

- Created [[harness]], [[enterprise-ai-reality]], [[seniority-and-the-junior-squeeze]], [[product-ownership]], [[connections-as-moat]]; contributed to [[code-as-throwaway]] and [[decoupling-identity-from-profession]].
- Added entities [[sebastian]], [[eugene]], [[virtido]].
- [[eugene]] noted as the likely vault owner / webinar author (Status: tentative).
