
#210 There are 2 kinds of devs. One of them is screwed. Justin Searls interview
From The freeCodeCamp Podcast by freeCodeCamp.org
March 6, 2026 · 1h 30m · Episode 210
About this episode
Quincy Larson interviews Justin Searls about the evolving landscape of software development and the impact of emerging tools on individual developers.
Today Quincy Larson interviews Justin Searls. He's a software engineer who cofounded a software agency 15 years ago that's still going – even after he figured out how to make a lot of money quickly and retire at age 38 once he had enough savings. These days he's gone from solving problems for client to solving solving problems for himself by building open source software. Often using emerging tools like agents. He says he getting way more done now than ever before. We talk about: - How software development is ceasing to be a team sport and is now more about individual devs working directly for the people paying them - How verifiability is everything - whether it's agents contributing to your codebase or humans - How someone just now entering the field can use emerging tools to get an edge over more experienced developers Note that I don't edit or censor these interviews at all. Justin uses some pretty blunt language so you may not want to listen to this around young children. Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with…
People in this episode
Host: Quincy Larson
Guest: Justin Searls
Topics covered
- software development
- open source software
- emerging tools
- individual developers
- verifiability
Keywords
- software engineer
- open source
- emerging tools
- individual devs
- client work
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: freeCodeCamp.org, Breaking Change
Books & works: There's no AI in team
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