A Lot of Software Engineering Is Becoming Engineering Leadership

The important shift in software engineering work from 2 years ago to today.

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Intro

The way we build software has been changing now for quite a while, and it’s really important that we acknowledge this shift.

I remember 2 years ago, when I was a full-time CTO, we were talking with the team about whether we should be using GitHub Copilot or not, and if it even helps.

Today, that conversation is totally different, and AI-assisted engineering is the standard in how we build software these days.

In this article, I’ll be sharing the changes happening to the way engineers work, and the most important skills to focus on. The insights are based on my conversations with many engineers and engineering leaders across different companies, both in the EU and the US.

Let’s start!

The engineering process has been quite straightforward for a while

When I started my career as an engineer 13 years ago, we had quite a similar software engineering process to the one we had 2 years ago when I was a full-time CTO.

Here is the process explained in a few simple steps (you are most likely fully familiar with it):

1. Someone creates a (Jira) ticket

That would be either the Tech Lead, PM, Manager, or an engineer themselves.

2. Someone works on the ticket

Engineers pick the ticket based on priority and implement the required changes/additions based on requirements.

3. Code review

Adding at least 2 engineers to review the code, with 1 approval needed in order to unlock the merge button + passing the (unit, integration, and e2e tests).

4. Merge the change

Either the PR author or assignee merges the change and pushes the change to the main or any other relevant branch.

5. Deployment

Deployment was either on specific times, some teams had it daily, some weekly, and some teams did continuous releases based on every change.

Over time, there were certainly optimizations to the process, but fundamentally this is how the process looked likes for a while.

Such process made it easy to just focus on finishing tasks

What felt comfortable in the process is how easy and clear it was to just focus on “doing your job”, which was picking a certain ticket, doing it, and then you got the satisfaction of completing something.

A lot of the hard work has been done before picking that ticket, thinking about design patterns, architecture, creating good practices, etc., by someone else before you.

Much of the work based on these tasks was: build something based on the pattern that was already created.

Additionally, many times someone else also asked all the business-related questions to validate whether that specific thing was the right thing to build.

Not every task was like that, but a lot of the tasks definitely had such a sentiment.

Such work can be very comfortable, as you just needed to focus on the “how”, because you know exactly what needs to be done, and you just need to do it.

And you aren’t taking any risks, as normally the tech lead or a PM took the accountability for whether that work was impactful or not.

This varied based on the size of the companies and the culture

The structured process, with a low amount of ownership, was quite common (still is, to some extent) in bigger companies with a lot more older systems that didn’t have such a huge pressure on delivering.

Smaller-to-mid-size companies always had a lot more ownership and responsibility attached to specific individuals, because when there are fewer people, you are automatically expected to wear more than 1 hat.

And of course, Big Tech has always been known to have a certain pressure and competitiveness among people working there, so there’s always been a structured process, but it had a forcing factor for people to be overachievers and take more ownership and responsibility.

What changes today?

This image is a really good representation of what has changed:

As you can see from the image, there’s a lot more (mobile) apps being built and released, but the apps with significant usage have actually dropped.

This means that pure building is worth less, but WHAT to build and WHY to build it so that people will care is worth so much more.

There’s a huge need for companies and products to stand out from competitors in a certain way, and just pure features and tech is just not going to cut it anymore. That’s already expected.

With this in mind, the work of engineers is shifting a level upwards, as pure building based on requirements is worth less, but great decision-making is worth a lot more.

The work is shifting a level upwards

I like to say that a lot of the engineering work is becoming engineering leadership. The Software Engineer role is becoming more like a Tech Lead role.

Engineers are writing code less, but generating it more with AI, therefore, reviewing code a lot more, which makes decision-making a bottleneck:

• choosing the right problem,

• making good trade-offs,

• collaboration + communication,

• validating assumptions,

• deciding what not to build.

All of these are very crucial things to focus on these days as an engineer at any level.

Spec-driven development is also becoming really popular these days, so focusing on creating good tech specs and ADRs is becoming more and more important.

And more and more engineers are expected to own projects end-to-end, so good planning and stakeholder communication are more important than ever.

This is how it looks like in practice

It’s also important to keep in mind the distinction between the sizes of companies and the culture, because that matters a lot for what the expectation is of your work as a software engineer.

I’ll go through all 3 different cases:

• Bigger companies (outside of Big Tech)

The shift in such companies is a lot slower, and the work + the process might not be that much different than the one that I’ve mentioned above at this time.

A lot of such companies haven’t even adopted AI properly and are still evaluating whether the security is a big risk if they use AI. However, there certainly are companies who have made the shift.

With time, in my opinion, all of the companies will adapt and adjust the way they work as well. So, if not already, I don’t see the future where engineering work will just look like: “Taking the next well-defined task and finishing it, without taking ownership and accountability of the project”.

If you’ve been doing work based on well-defined tasks, now, you need to start defining tasks yourself, that’s going to be more and more expected.

• Small-to-mid-size companies

If you’ve been wearing 2-3 hats as an engineer in such a company, being a backend engineer, frontend, and QA, it’s more and more common to be expected to wear 3-5 different hats, including product, FDE, and/or customer support.

A good example is the company PortKey, which has 24 engineers and 0 product managers, where every engineer is expected to wear many different hats.

And at the same time owning projects end-to-end. Really good examples are both OpenAI, and Anthropic, where most of the engineers are already owning or are expected to own a certain project end-to-end if needed.

• Big Tech companies

As mentioned above, there’s always been pressure to deliver in such companies, but now the pressure has just increased a level. We see a lot of layoffs happening, and people are often expected to deliver miracles these days, especially using AI.

Being able to manage expectations well, building a narrative around your work, and ensuring that your work is visible are key things to do well if you are a Big Tech engineer these days.

My advice for all the engineers is to really focus on building up your people skills

Many people advise engineers to focus on getting as good as possible with AI, getting to know all the latest tools and what’s possible to do with them.

While that’s important, I fully believe that the biggest upside in skills you can have is to focus on developing your leadership skills, communication, empathy, and overall emotional inteligence.

The reason is that you are most probably already good at tech skills, as that’s what you’ve been doing for quite a while now. But in order to make the shift to being more like a tech lead, you need to work on your people skills.

And that’s going to make you a lot more valuable, being able to lead projects end-to-end, while managing expectations correctly and ensuring that your work is impactful.

Last words

Let’s end this article with the following:

Technical skills are very important, but good judgment, being able to communicate well, and being a great leader are becoming THE skills.

My recommendation: really embrace the shift. And the sooner you’ll embrace it, the more valuable you'll become.

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