Hear Me Out: AI Pushing Software Engineers Into Teaching May Not Be So Bad

I have a confession to make.

When I first started noticing software engineers and other tech workers talking about becoming teachers, my first reaction was:

I’d like to see them try and I didn’t mean that nicely.

I wanted them to understand sacrifice and hard work from the eyes of a teacher. I was cynical about it.

But then I started listening to why some of these people were considering teaching.

Some software engineers spent years becoming really good at coding, problem solving and understanding how systems work, only to watch AI completely change the work.

They’re coding less. Work that once required them to wrestle with a problem has now been reduced to a prompt.

They miss the work.

That’s when I started thinking: Wait. Maybe these people have something our kids need.

A seasoned software engineer knows more than how to produce code. They know how to sit with a difficult problem, break it apart, fail and try again. They understand what’s happening underneath the tools because they learned the hard way.

AI can generate code but I don’t want our kids to only know how to ask AI to generate code.

They need to understand what’s happening under the hood. When I was teaching middle school math, I wouldn’t let kids use a calculator knowing that I would eventually let them use one once they were in a grade where they were tackling bigger problems. But while they were still learning the concepts and building their foundation, it was no calculator.

Maybe companies decide they don’t need humans doing as much of that deep work anymore.

That doesn’t mean we should stop teaching how to do it.

And that’s where I started seeing these tech workers differently.

No, don’t get me wrong knowing something deeply isn’t the same as knowing how to teach it. I’ve said teaching can feel like 70% classroom management, 10% actually teaching and 20% everything else nobody told you would be your job.

The trick is making that 10% count.

A seasoned teacher knows how to make that moment count. How to take something complicated and make it understandable to a fourteen-year-old. How to recognize when they’re losing the room and try another way.

Now imagine combining that teaching expertise with someone who has spent twenty years actually doing the thing these kids are learning.

That’s what changed my thinking.

I still want software engineers considering teaching to understand what they’re getting themselves into.

But now, when I hear one say AI has changed the work they used to love and they’re wondering whether teaching might be next, I’m not quite so cynical.

Perhaps AI can do more of the work.

Fine.

Our kids still need to learn how to think.

And maybe some of these engineers have something worth teaching them.