There’s a moment I’ve hit a hundred times without thinking: a form with a little box labeled “Occupation.” Or the small-talk version at a barbecue — “So, what do you do?” For most of my career the answer came out automatically: I’m a programmer.

But I haven’t written any serious code myself in something like six months.

And yet I’m building more software by volume of code than I ever have.

So this post is a bit of introspection. Not a crisis, more of a fun identity puzzle. In the age of AI-assisted development, what do I actually write in that box? Let’s try on some titles and see which ones fit.

What I actually do all day

For context: as a hobby project I’ve been building ordinaryanimator.com, a tool that helps you go from a story concept to AI-generated video. And yes, of course its full of AI agents. I provide a range of tools to review and critique human authored stories, then take that through to prompts to drive ComfyUI for generating say a YouTube series. I started building it with Cursor, threw gnarly problems at ChatGPT, dabbled with Google’s Antigravity, and more recently moved to Claude Code.

My day-to-day on the project involves describing the behavior I want. I make decisions about how the system should be structured. I review what comes back , sometimes reviewing the code, but honestly, that’s becoming less and less common. I test, I specify, I evaluate, I direct. The AI does the typing.

The output is real, working software. But more and more I shy away from saying “I wrote code to do …” as the defining activity of “programming”, sitting down and writing code, has quietly disappeared from my week. Which brings us to the titles.

Programmer

My original go-to answer used to be “I am a programmer”. Many people understand it. The problem is the thing that defines a programmer is writing programs, and I don’t do that anymore. On the other hand, programs are still what comes out the other end, and I’m the one making them exist. I catch myself shying away from “I wrote a program to …” and instead “I created a program to …”. A part of the reason why is the code does not follow my personal style any more. I have walked away from authoring lines of code.

Verdict: technically obsolete.

Developer

So how about “developer” instead? Hmmm. It feels just like “programmer” with a rebrand, a synonym dodge. Is there more to it? “Developer” always implied something slightly broader: you develop a product, not just code. You worry about the build pipeline, the deployment, the whole thing hanging together. That broader framing survives the AI shift better than “programmer” does.

Still, if someone asked me what the difference was, I’d struggle to give a crisp answer.

Verdict: closer, but vague.

Product Manager

This one surprised me by how well it fits. A good Product Manager figures out who the users are, what problems they have, what to build, and in what order. That’s genuinely most of my job now. I spend far more time thinking about what ordinaryanimator.com should do than how any particular function is implemented.

But then it breaks down. Product Managers traditionally don’t make the deep engineering calls. That’s Engineering and the whole point of the role boundary. I do make those calls: data models, system structure, which technologies to use, what technical debt to accept. Yes, I am spending more time on requirements, but I am still making core engineering decisions.

Verdict: half right.

Architect

When at Magento I used the title Chief Architect over my job title of VP of Architecture because it felt more aligned with what I was trying to achieve – alignment across teams of developers. And parts of it fit today. I’m doing the system design, making the structural decisions, solving the hard problems.

But in my experience an architect works with a team. The architect guides, reviews, and unblocks; other people build. On this project there is no team. I’m not guiding anyone toward building the software, I’m building it. (Well, telling AI what to write, but still.)

Verdict: right skills, wrong context.

IT Manager

IT Manager as a title was my fallback job title because it fit in fixed size fields, had the word manager if I wanted to get across I was more senior, and always felt distinctly wrong because IT feels more about equipment and infrastructure than coding.

Verdict: I used it, but it was wrong.

Software Engineer

Software Engineer is my current favorite. Software engineering was never about the typing. Engineering is designing solutions to problems within constraints: gathering requirements, weighing trade-offs, making design decisions, verifying the result actually works. Code was always just one of the tools.

By that definition, I’m doing more engineering than ever. I write requirements. I design. I solve problems. I judge whether the solution is good. The fact that an AI handles the transcription from intent to syntax doesn’t change any of that.

Verdict: the front-runner.

Some newer candidates

The titles above all predate AI. But the industry is busy inventing new ones, so let’s give a few of them a hearing.

AI Orchestrator. I don’t “play the instruments” (cut code) anymore; I conduct. It’s accurate, in a way. It’s also the kind of title that makes people at barbecues slowly back away, and it feels tied to this exact moment in tooling. I don’t want a job title with an expiry date.

Tech Lead (of a team of AI agents). Arguably the most precise description of the workflow: I set direction, make architecture decisions, delegate implementation, and review the work. It’s just that my “team” consists of AI agents. But claiming to lead a team of zero people feels like a stretch.

Vibe Coder. The meme term of the moment, and I’ll admit it’s honest about the mechanics. But it undersells things. I’m not just vibing: there are real design decisions, real requirements, real judgment involved. If I ship a bug, “the vibes were off” is not going in the postmortem.

Product Engineer. This one deserves a serious look. It’s a title that’s been gaining ground for people who own both the product thinking and the technical execution, which is exactly the combination AI-assisted solo building demands. If “Software Engineer” is the safe answer, “Product Engineer” might be the accurate one.

Builder / Maker. True, humble, and could equally describe a carpenter.

Creative Director. A stretch, but for ordinaryanimator.com specifically, not a crazy one. I’m directing software that itself directs the creation of video. Some days the job feels closer to directing than engineering.

The title was never the point

The durable parts of my job were never the keystrokes. They were understanding problems, making design decisions, and judging whether the result is any good. I used to use “Programmer” or “Software Developer” because they got the most recognition from a wide audience. “Architect” confused people not in the trade.

That’s why “Software Engineer” wins, at least today. Engineering was always defined by outcomes and judgment, not by which tool produced the artifact.

And titles have always lagged reality anyway. “Programmer” once meant someone who punched holes in cards (and yes, punch cards were still a thing when I went to college – at least for first year). The words catch up eventually.

Back to the form

So what will I write next time I hit that occupation box? Probably “Software Engineer”, but probably “VP of AI” as I am old so I spend more time managing others at work than doing personally. Or maybe I’ll just write “programmer” out of habit and enjoy the small private joke that the honest answer no longer fits in the box.

What do you write in that box these days?