It’s obvious that AI is making it cheaper and faster to build software. What’s less obvious is the kind of people who will have an advantage as that trend continues.
When building gets easier, what actually matters shifts. Less effort goes into execution and more effort goes into deciding what to build, how it should work, and whether anyone will actually use it.
That shift favors a different way of thinking and working.
From Roles to a Mode of Operation
Most software development today is organized around roles. Engineering builds. Product defines. Marketing positions. Sales sells. Each function owns a slice and hands work off to the next.
That structure made sense when building software required specialized expertise at each step, but it was also expensive and slow.
As AI reduces the cost of execution, that separation becomes less necessary and, in many cases, a liability. Ideas lose momentum as they pass through layers. Decisions get diluted. Feedback arrives late.
What works better in this environment is a tighter loop. One person, or a very small group, carries an idea from early understanding to a working product in the hands of real users. We’re talking weeks or less - not months or years.
Enter the Entreprengineer
I’m not sure if someone else came up with it, but the closest label I’ve been using to describe it is Entre-prengineer.
An Entreprengineer isn’t defined by a job title. They’re defined by how they work.
They can:
- Spend time close enough to customers to understand what actually matters
- Form a clear opinion about what should be built and why
- Build and launch a first version themselves
- Put it in front of users and learn from what happens
- Iterate quickly without waiting on handoffs or approvals
- And in many cases, move beyond MVP to a revenue generating product
This is not a replacement for any one role. It’s both a compression and an evolution of several roles. Think full stack engineer, but for launching a tech-enabled revenue generating business - all of it, end-to-end.
Why AI Changes the Equation
With AI, a single person can now move from idea to working solution faster. They can test assumptions earlier. They can iterate without assembling a full team. However, there’s still risk. When execution is easy, bad thinking shows up faster.
What Actually Matters Now
Being an Entreprengineer isn’t about knowing every tool or chasing the latest model.
It’s about:
- Understanding customers in context, not in abstraction
- Anticipating how a product changes behavior once it exists
- Thinking through failure modes before they become problems
- Making tradeoffs deliberately instead of by default
- Carrying responsibility from idea through launch and use
If bad thinking shows up faster, then good thinking compounds faster. That’s where the opportunity lies. Learn how to become a good thinker. Learn how to consistently do the above points.
Fortunately, I believe these are learnable skills, but they do require stepping outside narrow role definitions.
A Practical Warning
If you want to keep your footing as AI continues to change how software gets built, it’s worth learning how to think and work this way.
Roles built around narrow slices of execution are already under pressure. That pressure will increase. The people who stay relevant will be the ones who can think like Entreprengineers, even if their title never says so.
That doesn’t mean everyone needs to start a company. It means learning how to carry an idea end-to-end, without relying on clean role boundaries to do the thinking for you.
That type of work is becoming harder to replace.