Human software engineers paired with AI coding agents are currently more effective than either working alone, and this partnership phase could persist for 10-20 years before AI achieves full autonomy — giving engineers time to adapt rather than panic. The author argues we should treat software's trajectory like chess, which had a 20-year centaur age before AI dominance, though the outcome remains genuinely uncertain.

• Current AI coding agents (like Claude and Cursor) are reliable enough to work unsupervised but still need human review for alignment issues — matching technical values, avoiding over/under-engineering — making human-AI teams superior to either alone.
• Chess provides the closest historical parallel: its centaur age lasted about 20 years, while previous centaur ages (like humans with knitting frames) lasted 200+ years, suggesting software's could reasonably span a decade or two.
• The main risk isn't staying in software engineering for another decade — it's refusing to become a centaur by rejecting AI tools, or trying to jump ship early and give up a full career based on worst-case scenarios that may not materialize.