The future belongs to people who can just do things
Software development has enjoyed a remarkably consistent foundation for over 40 years—but that era is ending. Just as we once leapt from assembly to high-level languages, we’re now entering a new phase: programming with large language models. This shift isn’t incremental; it’s a new layer of abstraction. For engineering leaders, the challenge isn’t just adopting new tools—it’s guiding teams through a fundamental change in how we build software.
In this talk, Geoff Huntleys explore why now is the moment to reassess your carefully crafted roadmaps, identify which assumptions no longer hold, and prepare your people for a different kind of work. We’ll talk about accelerating your team’s “oh-fuck” moment—the realization that things are changing faster than expected—and how to support them through the emotional and professional turbulence that follows.
This is a call to action for technical leaders: to steer teams beyond fear and into growth, to reframe up-skilling as a strategic imperative, and to embrace the messy, necessary reinvention of what it means to be a software engineer.
