The Executive Brief
It seems like you can’t throw a rock these days without hitting a dozen AI-enabled products and at least one of them will offer you an AI-enabled rock to help you on your next throw!
On a more serious note, I have conversations about AI and jobs multiple times per week. Everyone from the CEO to the most junior engineer wants to know what their CTO thinks on the topic.
And I get it. It’s equal parts frightening and exciting with the volume turned up to eleven. That’s why I made AI the topic of this week’s article.
Once you know what I think, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic so leave me a comment.
Btw, before you dive into it, here are the most interesting bits in technology from the last week.
This week was filled with OpenAI drama. First, OpenAI responded to Elon Musk’s lawsuit in a blog post on the company web site. In the post are claims that Musk wanted to attack OpenAI with Tesla so the former could serve as Tesla’s “cash cow”. And they published emails from Musk to back it up.
The information does put a new light on Musk’s lawsuit. There’s not much more I can add except to say that I’m looking forward to Musk’s reply.In other OpenAI news, the New York Times (non-paywall version here) reported OpenAI CTO Mira Murati played a role in CEO Sam Altman briefly being ousted as CEO in December. Murtai responded on Twitter that she was being used as a scapegoat by the OpenAI board.
The CTO is part of senior leadership and carries with it a certain amount of politics. Usually those politics don’t play out in new headlines though. Next week I’ll be writing about this next week in an article entitled “Getting Criticized is a Key Part of a CTOs Role”.In his State of the Union address to Congress, President Biden proposed raising the minimum tax on corporations from 15% to 21% for businesses reporting annual profits of more $1 billion.
If this comes to pass, CTOs at the affected companies will have yet another headwind pushing against their budgets.
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How AI Will Change Software Engineering
The first thing to note is to not be afraid of AI and what it represents for us.
As Product & Engineering experts I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned, but we also have to look at the advent of this technology rationally and in the proper context.
Note: the world has been changing so fast since about 2012 or so, that I don’t even want to make a prediction here that is more than 5 years out. To reinforce that point, let’s look back at other machines-will-replace-us-all predictions from the past:
Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs (2012)
Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Could Be Done by Computers, Study Says (2013)
As you can see, their predictions didn’t quite work out.
In any case, in a nutshell: I think we (product managers and software engineers) were doing “everything” by hand all this time, and with AI getting as good as it is, “robots” will help us do our work better, stronger and faster in the future. Further, that this scenario is not unusual at all and keeps occurring throughout human history.
Let’s look at these other examples:
We used to build cars by hand, now robots help us
We used to farm by hand, now robots help us
We used to do math by hand, now robots (i.e. calculators) help us
We used to fly airplanes by hand, now robots (i.e. computers) help us
We used to communicate by hand (letters), now robots (i.e. email) help us
The same thing will happen to product management and software engineering at least in the next 3 to 5 years (after that is anyone’s guess).
And just like in those examples the global demand for cars, food, math, airplanes and communication has only gone up.
The same thing will be true for software. We live in a software-1st world today and that is ever increasing. Do you think the need for the next TikTok app will go away? Not anytime soon.
Love them or hate them, Bill Gates got software into everyone's living rooms, Steve Jobs got it into everyone’s pockets, and then Zuckerberg got it into everyone's brains.
The global demand for software is only going to increase — which is good for PMs and Engineers.
Now, here is how AI might actually f* you over as a Product Manager or Software Engineer.
If you’re mediocre and want to stay that way
If you don’t learn the AI toolsets
If you don’t think enough about the business results you’re driving & only care about tech
If you let your creativity or curiosity dwindle
If you reject AI as a concept, view it as your enemy and refuse to get involved in it
What this list means is that the nature of competition in your role will change with AI. Whether you know it or not you’ve always had competition for your job. And with AI that competition is no longer just against your frenemy on the team, but against what AI itself can do.
I think out of all of the AI impacts one of the hardest things for P&E workers is going to be the elimination of the possibility of staying at the same job level year after year, simply doing your work and collecting a paycheck, but never going “up” to the next level.
That is almost certainly going to go away over the course of the next 3 to 5 years.
AI will force the hand of everyone to put their job “on rails” or to nearly fully automate it. And once you’re done with that you will need to move to the next level in your career.
Most people should be trying to automate their jobs anyway. However, many prefer not to move up as they may be content in their role, or not want to get into management. With AI I feel those will no longer be options for most.
Closing Thoughts
But never fear. I (and many others) also predict new roles, job types, etc. will be created. I think Prompt Engineer will most likely disappear the way “Web Master” did after the 90s, but you get the idea.
Ultimately, we should not be fearful of AI as PMs and Engineers, we should be embracing AI and thinking creatively about how it can help us do our jobs better as we keep moving forward in our careers.
Here are some other articles from Technocratic that you may enjoy as well: