What Does a Developer Actually Need to Succeed in the Age of AI?
Five tech leaders share what they look for, what's changing, and how to stay relevant — straight from a packed panel in Puerto Rico.
AI Across Industries: Two Pathways to Careers in Puerto Rico
The room was packed with Holberton students, alumni, and members of the broader Puerto Rico tech community — all there to get a clearer picture of what it actually takes to build a career in software development right now, when AI is reshaping the rules faster than most curricula can keep up.
What emerged from the conversation was less a checklist and more a philosophy: build things, know yourself, stay curious, and never stop learning how to communicate.
“Enterprise development is not vibe coding. Know how to code. Be an expert in something.”
What Should Developers Learn Right Now?
Each panelist was asked to share the skills they think matter most. Here’s what they said — in their own words.
Enterprise Adoption of AI: What’s Actually Changing?
The conversation got direct when it turned to how companies are really adopting AI — beyond the hype. A few themes crystallized:
Key shifts happening right now
- Speed — AI is compressing development cycles far beyond what Agile alone achieved
- Codebases are being upgraded to handle more efficient data storage and retrieval
- Pivoting is a skill — the dynamic environment rewards adaptability over specialization alone
- ROI thinking — every tool and decision is increasingly being evaluated on measurable return
- Sub-agents like Metaswarm are becoming part of real workflows, not just experiments
Tips You Can Apply This Week
Beyond the big-picture skills, the panel was full of grounded, actionable advice for students and early-career developers:
From the floor
- Talk to real people — go to a barber, a pharmacist, and ask what problems technology could solve for them
- Build your own MVP. Ship something, even if it’s small
- Know virtual machines, Docker, and how to use servers — this is table stakes for DevOps
- A growth mindset isn’t a cliché: when the right opportunity finds you, you need to already be ready
- Use the Pomodoro technique — work in sprints, constrain yourself, and actually finish things
- Discover how you work best — hours, music, environment. This is a self-discovery process
- Understand why software development became a commodity — and use that knowledge strategically
What Students Took Away
I learned the two major paths for applying my software engineering skills — entrepreneurship versus working within a company. And I learned to keep building, because it improves your skills and might eventually become a product you can scale.
To reach my own goals, I need to put myself in positions outside my comfort zone. I also need to work alongside AI tools and keep moving forward into the future.
I learned how individuals are using local machine AI to handle weekly tasks — especially when token limitations are a real constraint. Seeing how someone structures their local AI workflow was genuinely new information for me.
It was a wake-up call about all the opportunities that exist in AI. I want to learn more.
Orchestrating AI agents, building management skills, and cultivating creativity should be a priority in software engineering right now.
Get Involved
The panelists and organizers pointed to a few communities worth joining if you’re part of the Puerto Rico tech ecosystem:
