I feel this deeply... but as an engineer at a big tech company. Over the past decade, I meticulously learned the code base and frameworks, attained readability of various programming languages, etc. I carefully wrote and reviewed code from engineers that took the time to understand what was there and how to make it better or add to it. Carefully crafting comments for feedback every so carefully to not over critique. Over the past 6 months, I have come to realize that world no longer exists. With scores of seemingly high quality code reviews from folks that don't understand what they are contributing to, it's impossible to keep up. I am also not at a place where I can say, I'm making a smaller trusted circle. Many folks in my circle are simply ramping up the quantity of code they want me to review. I simply have to rely more and more on AI to review the code and help me figure out what exactly it does. At the same time, I am also needing to generate more and more code to keep up with the expectations of those around me. We are now instructing our agents to leave comments, having the agents respond to those comments, even long threads where the agents debate technical decisions either both human author and human reviewer almost totally removed from the loop.
We are all getting more and more removed from the profession of writing code. It's like we abstracted away all of the details of writing code and we are spending our days just sending 100 interns on project quests.
I think some will adapt with the times and others will get burned out. This may be the end of open source as we know it, and maybe altogether...