Building becomes everyone's job
When a product manager can build a tool in a day, the developer's job shifts toward coaching, review, and architecture. Like graphic design after Canva, the skill moves up, not away.
The TL;DR about marketplaces is that more free plugins are likely to emerge, be reused, and further developed. Which is again not great news for small, medium and niche SaaS.
The most interesting change is what happens to roles when building spreads out.
If a product manager can prototype a working internal tool in a day, and an operations lead can wire it into the company's other systems, the developer's job shifts. It does not disappear.
Going from a quick prototype to a real, production tool still needs someone who understands security, access control, data integrity, and the choices that decide whether a fast build lasts or becomes an expensive mess.
So developers move toward being coaches, reviewers, and architects for a much wider group of builders. They set the guardrails and do the final, careful parts.
It moves up, toward coaching, review, and system judgment, much like design after Canva..
The TL;DR about marketplaces is that more free plugins are likely to emerge, be reused, and further developed. Which is again not great news for small, medium and niche SaaS.
The difference between a Mega Drive and enterprise software is that nobody's production database was at stake when you left Sonic paused overnight.
The most interesting change is what happens to roles when building spreads out.
We have seen this pattern before. After Canva, graphic design did not vanish. The skill moved up. It went toward judgment about systems, style, and coherence, and away from making each single output by hand.
Building turns into a shared activity. It is not a handoff from the business side to engineering. It is a loop where the people who know the work and the people who know the systems stay in the room together.
The difference between a Mega Drive and enterprise software is that nobody's production database was at stake when you left Sonic paused overnight.
It moves up, toward coaching, review, and system judgment, much like design after Canva.
When a product manager can build a tool in a day, the developer's job shifts toward coaching, review, and architecture. Like graphic design after Canva, the skill moves up, not away.
This is the short version. Read the full-length essay, “Enterprise assisted-coding is the new Mega Drive. How to survive the creative chaos?”.
This issue is part of Everybody's Smart, a newsletter on taste, judgment, AI, culture, cognition, and the future of professional work. New issues every 2 to 3 weeks, free on LinkedIn.
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