Patrick Contes blog

The "Everything" engineer: Why industry expectations are getting out of hand

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:44:00 +1000

I’m a frequent user of Reddit. I find it fascinating some of the stories that I read, from AusCorp, where someone is complaining about having to do a white collar role for the next 40 years and being miserable. To a post on GardeningAustralia, asking if yukkas are a good idea to keep long term. Everyone has something to ask, something to share, and something to ponder.

Recently, I came across a post in the AustraliaIT sub-reddit with this picture:

The Jevons Paradox: Why AI Won't Kill Software Engineering

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +1000

“White collar roles are dead”. That seems to be the common theme for most of the stuff I see on LinkedIn, Medium and anywhere else that likes to fear monger. I get it: AI is confronting, and is unlike anything we have seen before. These titles honestly annoy me because they are click-baity and sometimes lack substance. By that, I mean the content of these posts generally is unfounded and misses a whole heap of information. Let me give you an example. You may see a post claiming that a leading SaaS platform is no longer needed, because Little Johnny was able to vibe code a replacement in 8 hours. Or, Little Jane doesn’t need to work anymore because she has an army of agents to do everything her role requires. Congratulations, you solved the meaning of life! Little Johnny’s app works perfectly fine on localhost, and Little Jane was most likely going to be made redundant anyway!

Tailwind CSS: A warning for open source projects in the age of AI

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:05:32 +1000

AI is rapidly evolving. This is a known fact and should come as no surprise. The next frontier will likely emerge in the agentic space, focused on fully working out how to make agents do the bidding of their overlords. As of early 2026, the latest trend is Agent Skills — a powerful mechanism that allows you to define a structured set of instructions within a given context or framework, controlling how an agent performs a specific set of tasks.

Designing Egress in AWS

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 22:00:32 +1000

Introduction

AWS networking is fairly straightforward in a small setup. As a singular environment, you will generally have a single VPC that consists of:

Subnets
Route tables
Network ACLs (NACLs)
Security groups
An Internet Gateway (IGW)
NAT Gateway(s)

There are other components, and even some of the ones mentioned here may not be required. You might have a single subnet for all of your resources. Likewise, a NAT Gateway may not even be necessary (this is rare — and anyone exposing private workloads to the internet unnecessarily is not following best practice).

Perfect vs Practical: How to know when an IT Solution is ready

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 22:20:32 +1000

Introduction

Designing IT solutions is a challenging task. Not only do you need to take several factors into consideration, but you also need to understand the lifecycle of what you’re designing. Questions will inevitably pop into your head, like:

How long does this solution need to last?
Is it going to be perpetual?
How do we handle high availability and disaster recovery?
When will I know it’s complete?

That last point—when will I know it’s complete?—can be ambiguous. Does it mean the solution is fully fleshed out and working at the desired end state? Or does it mean it’s ready once a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has been constructed?