Product Engineers will run early stage startups
Been thinking about this a lot lately. Like genuinely a lot. The way we build software is changing so damn fast that job titles from two years ago already feel outdated. And if I had to bet on one role thats gonna dominate early stage startups in the next five years? Product engineer. Hands down.
So traditional software teams had this very clear division na. Designers made things look good. Frontend engineers built the UI. Backend folks handled server stuff. Product managers decided what to build. Everyone stayed in their lane. It worked I guess, but god it was slow. Every handoff was a potential bottleneck. Someone misunderstands something and boom, two weeks gone.
Early stage startups and even Series A B companies, they dont have that luxury. They cant afford to wait. They need people who can think about what to build AND actually build it. Someone who gets users, can design decent interfaces, write code that works, and ship. Fast. Thats basically what a product engineer is. Not a specialist. More like a generalist who can switch hats without making a mess of things.
Now throw AI into this and it gets wild.
Biggest shift I've noticed? You dont need to remember syntax anymore. Like literally at all. When was the last time I googled how to center a div? I genuinely cant remember. Or looked up useEffect cleanup syntax? No idea. That stuff just... doesnt matter anymore. What matters is knowing that you NEED a cleanup function in the first place. The why, not the how.
And this is where first principles thinking becomes everything honestly.
When youre building something now, the real skill is breaking down problems from scratch. What are we actually solving here? Whats the simplest approach? What are the tradeoffs we're making? How should data flow through this thing? Where does this logic even belong? These are architecture questions. System design stuff. No AI can answer these for you because they need context. Your users, your constraints, your weird business requirements that dont make sense to anyone outside.
Once youve figured that part out though, the actual coding becomes almost trivial. You tell Claude or Cursor what you want. I need a webhook that listens for this event, validates the payload, updates the database, triggers a notification. And it just... does it. Syntax, boilerplate, error handling, all generated.
Ill give you my example. I was a frontend engineer for years. React, TypeScript, vanilla CSS, the whole thing. Could build complex layouts, animations, component systems from scratch. Spent hours perfecting stuff. But last seven eight months? Havent written a single line of UI code myself. Zero. Everything AI generated. Cursor, Claude, v0, whatever works. And still shipped seven projects in four months. They look good too. QuietInbox got featured on dev.to. Vortex went viral. RoomcraftAI has actual paying users.
How does that even work? Because writing CSS isnt the skill anymore. Knowing what good looks like is. Having taste. Understanding what users actually need and being able to explain that clearly to an AI. The code part, thats getting commoditized real fast. The thinking part? Thats still us.
Think about it. Earlier you needed two things to build software. Know what to build. Know how to build it. The how part took years. Learning frameworks, memorizing APIs, understanding all the quirks of whatever language youre using. That was the moat. Thats what made senior engineers worth their salary.
Now AI does most of the how. So the moat shifted. Can you think clearly? Can you design systems that wont fall apart at scale? Can you make good product calls? Can you architect something that actually makes sense? Thats what matters now.
Design engineers are having a moment too btw. They were always this weird hybrid. Not fully designers, not fully engineers. Somewhere in the middle. Companies never really knew what to do with them honestly. But now theyre super valuable because they have taste PLUS technical understanding. And AI tools desperately need that from humans.
AI generates code. Even pretty good code sometimes. But it cant tell you if something feels off. It wont notice that the spacing looks weird or the interaction is clunky. Cant make product decisions. Cant prioritize. Cant look at your system and go "yeah this is gonna be a problem in six months". That judgment layer? Still human.
The way I work now is completely different from two years ago. Most of my time goes into thinking. Sketching data models on paper. Drawing system diagrams. Figuring out how pieces talk to each other. What happens when this thing fails? Should we cache this? Separate service or keep it in the monolith? Thats where my brain goes.
When I actually sit down to "code", its mostly prompting. Describe what I want. Review what comes back. Ask for changes. Iterate. Sometimes I tweak manually but thats becoming rare honestly. AI handles implementation. I handle direction.
So where does this leave everyone?
I think early stage teams are gonna look like this. Small groups of product engineers who can do everything reasonably well instead of one thing perfectly. AI handles the boring stuff. Boilerplate, bug fixes, UI components. Humans focus on what AI cant touch. Talking to users. Making product calls. Understanding the market. Designing systems. Iterating based on real feedback.
Ten person engineering team becomes three people shipping the same amount. Designer who only designed now also implements. Frontend dev who only wrote React starts thinking about the whole product.
This isnt even a prediction anymore tbh. Its happening. Look at teams building interesting stuff right now. Theyre tiny. Two people. Three people. Sometimes one person building things that wouldve needed whole departments before.
For anyone starting out or thinking about what to learn, honest advice? Dont spend ages memorizing syntax or learning every detail of specific frameworks. That knowledge expires fast now. Focus on fundamentals instead. How do databases actually work? How does the web work? What makes an API design good or bad? How do you think about system architecture? How do you break complex things into smaller problems?
Not saying ignore basics completely. That would be dumb. You need foundation. Understand what a promise is before architecting async flows. Know what SQL joins do before designing data models. Write some code manually so you know what questions to even ask the AI.
Just dont get stuck there for months. Ive seen people try to master every React hook or memorize CSS properties before building anything real. Wrong approach now. Learn enough to start, figure out gaps as you go. When you hit something you dont know, AI helps you fill it in minutes not days.
Old way was learn everything then build. New way is start building, learn along the way, let AI cover what you dont know yet. Different mental model completely. You dont need permission to build anymore. Dont need to wait till youre "ready". Youll never feel ready anyway so just start. Youll figure it out.
I learned more backend architecture in two years of actually shipping stuff than years of tutorials and courses. Building real things means real problems. Solving real problems teaches faster than any curriculum.
Learn enough frontend to be dangerous. Enough backend to ship. Enough design to have taste. And most importantly learn to think from first principles and communicate that thinking clearly. Thats what youll do most of the time. Think and communicate. AI handles the rest.
Companies that get this early will move way faster than everyone else. People who position themselves as product engineers instead of just engineers or just designers? Theyre gonna be in demand.
Role is still evolving. Title might change even. But the core thing, someone who thinks about product, architects systems, ships end to end with AI as their coding partner? Thats not going anywhere. If anything its becoming the default.
Interesting times ahead na.
Used LLMs to correct grammar and typos.