WeAreDevelopers is coming to the US to give unsung developers a bigger voice

Key Concepts

• Agentic Software Development: The shift from manual coding to orchestrating multiple AI agents to perform tasks, manage workflows, and generate code.
• Developer-First Ethos: A philosophy prioritizing the needs, community, and hands-on learning of software engineers over vendor-specific marketing or corporate agendas.
• Vendor Neutrality: The practice of providing a platform where various technologies and solutions are presented equally, allowing developers to choose the best tools for their specific problems.
• Token-Based Management: A new framework for engineering leadership where budget and productivity are measured by "tokens" (AI compute usage) rather than just traditional headcount or salary.
• Post-AI (PA) Era: The current paradigm where software is built with AI-native processes, contrasting with legacy systems that require transformation.
• Session Logs/Checkpoints: The "why" behind code; capturing the intent, reasoning, and decision-making process of developers and agents, which serves as institutional knowledge.

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1. The Evolution of "We Are Developers"

Founded in 2015 in Vienna by Sead Ahmetovic and Benjamin Ruschin, We Are Developers began as a grassroots project to fill a gap in the event landscape.

• The Gap: Ten years ago, conferences were either startup-focused (marketing/sales-heavy) or hyper-niche (single-language/framework). There was no event covering the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) for the broader community.
• Growth: The event grew from a 300-person meetup to a global series hosting 15,000 attendees.
• Expansion: The organization is expanding to San Jose (September) and India (November) to meet demand from US-based partners and the global developer community.
• Philosophy: The event maintains a "by developers, for developers" ethos. It avoids product pitches, focusing instead on hands-on, actionable knowledge transfer.

2. The Agentic Future of Code

Thomas Dohmke, CEO of Entire and former CEO of GitHub, argues that we are entering a new era where agents have "eaten" software development.

• The Shift: Developers are moving away from browsing file trees and writing manual code toward managing "orchestras of agents."
• The Role of the Human: The human developer remains the "craftsperson." AI does not replace the developer; it removes the bottleneck of repetitive tasks, allowing the human to focus on high-level architecture, intent, and product quality.
• New Artifacts: Dohmke emphasizes that the most important artifact in the future is not the code itself, but the session logs and reasoning behind the code. These logs provide the "institutional memory" that helps new team members understand why specific architectural decisions were made.

3. Methodologies for Engineering Leaders

• Budgeting for AI: Leaders must shift from "peanut buttering" budgets (spreading resources evenly) to allocating tokens to the most effective engineers. The goal is to identify who can convert the smallest amount of compute into the largest amount of value.
• Managing Agents: Managers should avoid micromanaging agent outputs. Instead, they should focus on verifying the agent's reasoning against the original intent, similar to how a manager oversees a team without reviewing every single keystroke.
• The "Post-AI" Transformation: Existing companies must transform their processes to become "AI-native," as the workflows of the past are incompatible with the speed and scale of agentic development.

4. Notable Quotes

• Sead Ahmetovic: "We are not an event company, we are a software company, a knowledge company... we didn't do it based on an event management playbook."
• Thomas Dohmke: "All the companies founded now are effectively post-AI... the way they're building is with AI in mind."
• Thomas Dohmke: "Software development is not a factory job... it is much more a creative job."
• Sead Ahmetovic: "A developer is someone who builds something... the job in five years will be less typing, more thinking, more orchestrating, and more talking."

5. Synthesis and Conclusion

The conversation highlights a fundamental shift in the software industry: the transition from manual production to an agentic assembly line. We Are Developers serves as a critical hub for this transition, providing a vendor-neutral space for engineers to learn how to navigate this new landscape. The consensus between Ahmetovic and Dohmke is that while the tools and the "how" of coding are changing—moving toward mobile-first, agent-orchestrated workflows—the core identity of the developer as a creator remains unchanged. The future of software development is not about fewer developers, but about developers becoming "magicians" who can achieve more human progress by leveraging AI to handle the complexity of modern software systems.