The State of Career Growth in Elixir with Bruce Tate

In this episode, Elixir Wizards Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Bruce Tate, founder of Groxio and longtime Elixir educator, to discuss career growth and mentorship in the age of AI.

Bruce reflects on Elixir’s evolution and explores how AI coding agents are changing the way developers learn, work, and advance. He explains his “anti-vibe coding” philosophy and recommends practices for maintaining code quality, arguing that many struggles attributed to junior developers are really failures of training and mentorship.

Rather than using AI productivity gains to eliminate entry-level roles, Bruce challenges teams to reinvest that time in educating juniors to support their long-term career path.

Bruce will expand on this conversation at ElixirConf 2026, September 10–11 in Chicago, and the Elixir Wizards will be there too! Join us and the broader Elixir community, and use promo code Elixirwizards for 10% off in-person or virtual tickets at https://elixirconf.com/

Topics discussed in this episode:

The evolution of the Elixir ecosystem from conception to now

Rethinking career growth and mentorship in the age of AI

What “anti-vibe coding” means

Functional core and imperative shell design

OTP fundamentals and architectural literacy

Managing AI-generated code and pull requests

Mentorship beyond code review