A New IT Role for a New Era
While browsing the internet, I came across a new professional figure: the "VibeCode Cleanup Specialist". This represents truly a sign of our times, born directly from the rise of artificial intelligence.
This is what happens: a professional from a non-IT background, the ones we call "vibe coder," starts writing complex code using an AI programming agent (lovable, Cursor, Claude code etc). They build and build, and everything seems magical. But then, they hit a wall. Trust me, sooner or later, they always hit a wall. The product they've built fails to pass the most basic performance or security tests, or it becomes so convoluted that it's impossible to manage.
This is where our new professional figure comes into play. It's a classic IT expert, but now they are called upon to remedy and fix what a purely AI-driven process could not complete. Often, this involves the complete rewrite of entire sections of the codebase. In these scenarios, AI can still be a powerful assistant, but only when applied to limited contexts and acting on specific parts of the code under expert supervision.
What kind of problems cause a "vibe coder's" project to grind to a halt? Here are some of the most common examples:
This inevitably leads to a cascade of frustrating problems for the creator:
So, just when some believed that the developer's job was becoming obsolete, a new approach is born. A new branch of IT emerges, further enriching the level of abstraction that AI has brought to our work.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn. You can read the full version and engage with the community discussion at:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-ai-code-fixer-new-role-era-vittorio-margherita-wec8f/