378 lines
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378 lines
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Plaintext
[1]
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justin․searls․co
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[2][ ]
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[3]Posts [4]Casts [5]Links [6]Shots [7]Takes [8]Tubes [9]Clips [10]Spots [11]
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Slops [12]Mails
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[13]About [14]Search [15] Subscribe
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[16]Posts [17]Casts [18]Links [19]Shots [20]Takes [21]Tubes [22]Clips [23]Spots
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[24]Slops [25]Mails
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[26]About [27]Search [28] Subscribe
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• [29]Work
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• [30]GitHub
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• [31]YouTube
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• [32]LinkedIn
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• [33]Instagram
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• [34]Mastodon
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• [35]Twitter
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Monday, Jul 7, 2025 [36]
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Full-breadth Developers
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The software industry is at an inflection point unlike anything in its brief
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history. Generative AI is all anyone can talk about. It has rendered entire
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product categories obsolete and upended the job market. With any economic
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change of this magnitude, there are bound to be winners and losers. So far, it
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sure looks like full-breadth developers—people with both technical and product
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capabilities—stand to gain as clear winners.
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What makes me so sure? Because over the past few months, the engineers I know
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with a lick of product or business sense have been absolutely scorching through
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backlogs at a dizzying pace. It may not map to any particular splashy
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innovation or announcement, but everyone agrees generative coding tools crossed
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a significant capability threshold recently. It's what led me to write this. In
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just two days, I've completed two months worth of work on [37]Posse Party.
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I did it by providing an exacting vision for the app, by maintaining stringent
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technical standards, and by letting [38]Claude Code do the rest. If you're able
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to cram critical thinking, good taste, and strong technical chops into a single
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brain, these tools hold the potential to unlock incredible productivity. But I
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don't see how it could scale to multiple people. If you were to split me into
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two separate humans—Product Justin and Programmer Justin—and ask them to work
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the same backlog, it would have taken weeks instead of days. The communication
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cost would simply be too high.
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[39]We can't all be winners
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When I step back and look around, however, most of the companies and workers I
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see are currently on track to wind up as losers when all is said and done.
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In recent decades, businesses have not only failed to cultivate full-breadth
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developers, they've trained a generation into believing product and engineering
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roles should be strictly segregated. To suggest a single person might drive
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both product design and technical execution would sound absurd to many people.
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Even for companies who realize inter-disciplinary developers are the new key to
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success, their outmoded job descriptions and salary bands are failing to
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recruit and retain them.
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There is an urgency to this moment. Up until a few months ago, the best
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developers played the violin. Today, [40]they play the orchestra.
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[41]Google screwed up
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I've been obsessed with this issue my entire career, so pardon me if I betray
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any feelings of schadenfreude as I recount the following story.
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I managed to pass a phone screen with Google in 2007 before graduating college.
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This earned me an all-expense paid trip for an in-person interview at the
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vaunted [42]Googleplex. I went on to experience complete ego collapse as I
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utterly flunked their interview process. Among many deeply embarrassing
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memories of the trip was a group session with a Big Deal Engineer who was
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introduced as the inventor of [43]BigTable. ([44]Jeff Dean, probably? Unsure.)
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At some point he said, "one of the great things about Google is that
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engineering is one career path and product is its own totally separate career
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path."
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I had just paid a premium to study computer science at a liberal arts school
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and had the audacity to want to use those non-technical skills, so I bristled
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at this comment. And, being constitutionally unable to keep my mouth shut, I
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raised my hand to ask, "but what if I play a hybrid class? What if I think it's
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critical for everyone to engage with both technology and product?"
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The dude looked me dead in the eyes and told me I wasn't cut out for Google.
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The recruiter broke a long awkward silence by walking us to the cafeteria for
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lunch. She suggested I try [45]the ice cream sandwiches. I had lost my appetite
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for some reason.
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In the years since, an increasing number of companies around the world have
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adopted Silicon Valley's trademark dual-ladder career system. Tech people sit
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over here. Idea guys go over there.
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[46]What separates people
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Back to winners and losers.
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Some have discarded everything they know in favor of an "AI first" workflow.
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Others decry generative AI as a fleeting boondoggle like crypto. It's caused me
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to broach the topic with trepidation—as if I were asking someone their
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politics. I've spent the last few months noodling over why it's so hard to
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guess how a programmer will feel about AI, because people's reactions seem to
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cut across roles and skill levels. What factors predict whether someone is an
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overzealous AI booster or a radicalized AI skeptic?
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Then I was reminded of that day at Google. And I realized that developers I
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know who've embraced AI tend to be more creative, more results-oriented, and
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have good product taste. Meanwhile, AI dissenters are more likely to code for
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the sake of coding, expect to be handed crystal-clear requirements, or
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otherwise want the job to conform to a routine 9-to-5 grind. The former group
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feels unchained by these tools, whereas the latter group just as often feels
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threatened by them.
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When I take stock of who is thriving and who is struggling right now, a
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person's willingness to play both sides of the ball has been the best predictor
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for success.
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Role Engineer Product Full-breadth
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Junior ❌ ❌ ✅
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Senior ❌ ❌ ✅
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Breaking down the patterns that keep repeating as I talk to people about AI:
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• Junior engineers, as is often remarked, don't have a prayer of sufficiently
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evaluating the quality of an LLM's work. When the AI hallucinates or makes
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mistakes, novice programmers are more likely to learn the wrong thing than
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to spot the error. This would be less of a risk if they had the permission
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to decelerate to a snail's pace in order to learn everything as they go,
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but in this climate nobody has the patience. I've heard from a number of
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senior engineers that the overnight surge in junior developer productivity
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(as in "lines of code") has brought organization-wide productivity (as in
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"working software") to a halt—consumed with review and remediation of
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low-quality AI slop. This is but one factor contributing to the sense that
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lowering hiring standards was a mistake, so it's no wonder that juniors
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have been first on the chopping block
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• Senior engineers who earnestly adopt AI tools have no problem learning how
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to coax LLMs into generating "good enough" code at a much faster pace than
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they could ever write themselves. So, if they're adopting AI, what's the
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problem? The issue is that the productivity boon is becoming so great that
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companies won't need as many senior engineers as they once did. Agents work
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relentlessly, and tooling is converging on a vision of senior engineers as
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cattle ranchers, steering entire herds of AI agents. How is a
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highly-compensated programmer supposed to compete with a stable of agents
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that can produce an order of magnitude more code at an acceptable level of
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quality for a fraction of the price?
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• Junior product people are, in my experience, largely unable to translate
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amorphous real-world problems into well-considered software solutions. And
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communicating those solutions with the necessary precision to bring those
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solutions to life? Unlikely. Still, many are having success with app
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creation platforms that provide the necessary primitives and guardrails.
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But those tools always have a low capability ceiling (just as with any
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low-code/no-code platform). Regardless, is this even a role worth hiring?
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If I wanted mediocre product direction, I'd ask ChatGPT
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• Senior product people are among the most excited I've seen about coding
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agents—and why shouldn't they be? They're finally free of the tyranny of
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nerds telling them everything is impossible. And they're building stuff!
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Reddit is lousy with posts showing off half-baked apps built in half a day.
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Unfortunately, without routinely inspecting the underlying code, anything
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larger than a toy app is doomed to collapse under its own weight. The fact
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LLMs are so agreeable and unwilling to push back often collides with the
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blue-sky optimism of product people, which can result in each party leading
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the other in circles of irrational exuberance. Things may change in the
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future, but for now there's no way to build great software without also
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understanding how it works
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Hybrid-class operators, meanwhile, seem to be having a great time regardless of
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their skill level or years experience. And that's because what differentiates
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full-stack developers is less about capability than about mindset. They're
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results-oriented: they may enjoy coding, but they like getting shit done even
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more. They're methodical: when they encounter a problem, they experiment and
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iterate until they arrive at a solution. The best among them are visionaries:
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they don't wait to be told what to work on, they identify opportunities others
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don't see, and they dream up software no one else has imagined.
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Many are worried the market's rejection of junior developers portends a future
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in which today's senior engineers age out and there's no one left to replace
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them. I am less concerned, because less experienced full-breadth developers are
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navigating this environment extraordinarily well. Not only because they
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excitedly embraced the latest AI tools, but also because they exhibit the
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discipline to move slowly, understand, and critically assess the code these
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tools generate. The truth is computer science majors, apprenticeship programs,
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and code schools—today, all dead or dying—were never very effective at turning
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out competent software engineers. Claude Pro may not only be the best
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educational resource under $20, it may be the best way to learn how to code
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that's ever existed.
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[47]There is still hope
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Maybe you've read this far and the message hasn't resonated. Maybe it's
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triggered fears or worries you've had about AI. Maybe I've put you on the
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defensive and you think I'm full of shit right now. In any case, whether your
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organization isn't designed for this new era or you don't yet identify as a
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full-breadth developer, this section is for you.
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[48]Leaders: go hire a good agency
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While my goal here is to coin a silly phrase to help us better communicate
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about the transformation happening around us, we've actually had a word for
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full-breadth developers all along: consultant.
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And not because consultants are geniuses or something. It's because, as I
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learned when I interviewed at Google, if a full-breadth developer wants to do
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their best work, they need to exist outside the organization and work on
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contract. So it's no surprise that some of my favorite full-breadth consultants
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are among AI's most ambitious adopters. Not because AI is what's trending, but
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because our disposition is perfectly suited to get the most out of these new
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tools. We're witnessing their potential to improve how the world builds
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software firsthand.
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When founding our consultancy [49]Test Double in 2011, [50]Todd Kaufman and I
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told anyone who would listen that our differentiator—our whole thing—was that
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we were business consultants who could write software. Technology is just a
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means to an end, and that end (at least if you expect to be paid) is to
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generate business value. Even as we started winning contracts with VC-backed
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companies who seemed to have an infinite money spigot, we would never break
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ground until we understood how our work was going to make or save our clients
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money. And whenever the numbers didn't add up, we'd push back until the return
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on investment for hiring Test Double was clear.
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So if you're a leader at a company who has been caught unprepared for this new
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era of software development, my best advice is to hire an agency of
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full-breadth developers to work alongside your engineers. Use those experiences
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to encourage your best people to start thinking like they do. Observe them at
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work and prepare to blow up your job descriptions, interview processes, and
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career paths. If you want your business to thrive in what is quickly becoming a
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far more competitive landscape, you may be best off hitting reset on your human
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organization and starting over. Get smaller, stay flatter, and only add
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structure after the dust settles and repeatable patterns emerge.
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[51]Developers: congrats on your new job
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A lot of developers are feeling scared and hopeless about the changes being
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wrought by all this. Yes, AI is being used as an excuse by executives to lay
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people off and pad their margins. Yes, how foundation models were trained was
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unethical and probably also illegal. Yes, hustle bros are running around making
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bullshit claims. Yes, almost every party involved has a reason to make
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exaggerated claims about AI.
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All of that can be true, and it still doesn't matter. Your job as you knew it
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is gone.
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If you want to keep getting paid, you may have been told to, "move up the value
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chain." If that sounds ambiguous and unclear, I'll put it more plainly: figure
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out how your employer makes money and position your ass directly in-between the
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corporate bank account and your customers' credit card information. The longer
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the sentence needed to explain how your job makes money for your employer, the
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further down the value chain you are and the more worried you should be.
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There's no sugar-coating it: you're probably going to have to push yourself way
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outside your comfort zone.
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Get serious about learning and using these new tools. You will, like me, recoil
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at first. You will find, if you haven't already, that all these fancy AI tools
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are really bad at replacing you. That they fuck up constantly. Your new job
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starts by figuring out how to harness their capabilities anyway. You will
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gradually learn how to extract something that approximates how you would have
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done it yourself. Once you get over that hump, the job becomes figuring out how
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to scale it up. Three weeks ago I was a Cursor skeptic. Today, I'm utterly
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exhausted working with Claude Code, because I can't write new requirements fast
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enough to keep up with parallel workers across multiple worktrees.
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As for making yourself more valuable to your employer, I'm not telling you to
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demand a new job overnight. But if you look to your job description as a shield
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to protect you from work you don't want to do… stop. Make it the new minimum
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baseline of expectations you place on yourself. Go out of your way to surprise
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and delight others by taking on as much as you and your AI supercomputer can
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handle. Do so in the direction of however the business makes its money. Sit
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down and try to calculate the return on investment of your individual efforts,
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and don't slow down until that number far exceeds the fully-loaded cost you
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represent to your employer.
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Start living these values in how you show up at work. Nobody is going to
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appreciate it if you rudely push back on every feature request with, "oh yeah?
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How's it going to make us money?" But your manager will appreciate your asking
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how you can make a bigger impact. And they probably wouldn't be mad if you were
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to document and celebrate the ROI wins you notch along the way. Listen to what
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the company's leadership identifies as the most pressing challenges facing the
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business and don't be afraid to volunteer to be part of the solution.
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All of this would have been good career advice ten years ago. It's not rocket
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science, it's just deeply uncomfortable for a lot of people.
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[52]Good game, programmers
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Part of me is already mourning the end of the previous era. Some topics I spent
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years blogging, speaking, and building tools around are no longer relevant.
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Others that I've been harping on for years—obsessively-structured code
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organization and ruthlessly-consistent design patterns—are suddenly more
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valuable than ever. I'm still sorting out what's worth holding onto and what I
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should put back on the shelf.
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As a person, I really hate change. I wish things could just settle down and
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stand still for a while. Alas.
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If this post elicited strong feelings, please [53]e-mail me and I will respond.
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If you find my perspective on this stuff useful, you might enjoy my podcast,
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[54]Breaking Change. 💜
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Got a taste for hot, fresh takes?
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Then you're in luck, because you'll pay $0 for my 2¢ when you [55]subscribe to
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my work, whether via [56]RSS or your favorite [57]social network.
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I also have a monthly [58]newsletter where I write high-tempo,
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thought-provoking essays about life, in case that's more your speed:
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[59][ ] [60][Sign up]
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And if you'd rather give your eyes a rest and your ears a workout, might I
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suggest my long-form solo podcast, [61]Breaking Change? Odd are, you haven't
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heard anything quite like it.
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© 2025 Justin Searls. All rights reserved.
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References:
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[1] https://justin.searls.co/
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[3] https://justin.searls.co/posts/
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[4] https://justin.searls.co/casts/
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[5] https://justin.searls.co/links/
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[6] https://justin.searls.co/shots/
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[7] https://justin.searls.co/takes/
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[8] https://justin.searls.co/tubes/
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[9] https://justin.searls.co/clips/
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[10] https://justin.searls.co/spots/
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[11] https://justin.searls.co/slops/
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[12] https://justin.searls.co/mails/
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[13] https://justin.searls.co/about/
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[14] https://justin.searls.co/search/
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[15] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
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[16] https://justin.searls.co/posts/
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[17] https://justin.searls.co/casts/
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[18] https://justin.searls.co/links/
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[19] https://justin.searls.co/shots/
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[20] https://justin.searls.co/takes/
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[21] https://justin.searls.co/tubes/
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[22] https://justin.searls.co/clips/
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[23] https://justin.searls.co/spots/
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[24] https://justin.searls.co/slops/
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[25] https://justin.searls.co/mails/
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[26] https://justin.searls.co/about/
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[27] https://justin.searls.co/search/
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[28] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
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[29] https://searls.co/
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[30] https://github.com/searls
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[31] https://youtube.com/@JustinSearls
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[32] https://linkedin.com/in/searls
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[33] https://instagram.com/searls
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[34] https://mastodon.social/@searls
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[35] https://twitter.com/searls
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[36] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/
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[37] https://posseparty.com/
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[38] https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
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[39] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#we-cant-all-be-winners
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[40] https://youtu.be/-9ZQVlgfEAc?si=bMjmWriVIFWtJmci&t=38
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[41] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#google-screwed-up
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[42] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googleplex
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[43] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigtable
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[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dean
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[45] https://www.itsiticecream.com/
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[46] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#what-separates-people
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[47] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#there-is-still-hope
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[48] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#leaders-go-hire-a-good-agency
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[49] https://testdouble.com/
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[50] https://www.linkedin.com/in/testdoubletodd
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[51] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#developers-congrats-on-your-new-job
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[52] https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/#good-game-programmers
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[53] mailto:justin@searls.co
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[54] https://justin.searls.co/casts/breaking-change/
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[55] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
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[56] https://justin.searls.co/rss/
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[57] https://justin.searls.co/posse/
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[58] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
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[61] https://justin.searls.co/casts/breaking-change/
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