Chapter 12 - Reality Check

If you get lazy, you will be replaced by literally anyone else.

Here's the hard truth I tell myself, and that I'll tell you.

GitHub Copilot is extraordinary. It is also a mirror. It will faithfully amplify whatever you bring to the table. If you bring expertise, judgement, taste, and care, it will amplify those. If you bring laziness, sloppiness, and a willingness to merge code you didn't read, it will amplify those too. And the second outcome is faster than the first.

So the reality check is this: the tool does not protect your job. You protect your job. The way you protect it is by being the part of the loop that the model cannot be.

• The model doesn't know your users. You do.
• The model doesn't know last year's incident. You do.
• The model doesn't know which compromise the team agreed to in the design review. You do.
• The model doesn't know which corner of the codebase is haunted. You do.
• The model doesn't have taste. You do, and if you don't, develop it.

If your contribution to the work is "I accepted the suggestion," you are competing on a skill the tool has automated, and you will lose that competition. If your contribution is judgement, creativity, context, and ownership, you are competing on a skill the tool amplifies, and you win that competition every time.

Partner with Copilot. Don't outsource to it. Bring something of yourself. Otherwise, why are you in the chair?