This matches what I see from the other side. I'm a solo founder with 10 years in AI startups and my workflow is about 80% AI generated code. It works because I know what's wrong when the AI generates something subtly broken, and I know which corners not to cut.

The real insight the article misses is that AI coding tools actually widen the gap. The more senior you are, the more you accelerate. You're a better reviewer, you scope tasks correctly, you catch the nonsense faster. The friends in this post didn't fail because the tools are bad. They failed because reviewing code is harder than writing it, and you can't review what you don't understand.