← All Decks
The Economics of Software Are Changing
And our habits need to catch up
1 / 26
Today’s agenda
- What’s actually changing
- What’s no longer worth optimising
- What becomes the new constraint
- New skills to build
- A workshop to work through it together
2 / 26
Why now?
This isn’t about individual productivity tools.
It’s a structural shift in where the leverage is — and most teams haven’t updated their processes to match.
3 / 26
Code is now cheap to produce
A first draft — component, migration, test suite — costs minutes, not days.
The bottleneck has moved from writing to reviewing, deciding, and integrating.
4 / 26
What this unlocks
- Exploration is now affordable — try three approaches before committing
- One person can span more — backend engineers draft frontend, PMs build prototypes
- The cost of being wrong early has dropped dramatically
- Thin vertical slices beat elaborate upfront planning
5 / 26
The uncomfortable implication
When execution is fast, the scarce resource isn’t effort.
It’s clarity.
6 / 26
What’s no longer worth optimising
| Before | Now |
|---|---|
| DRY code, premature abstraction | Duplication is fine — AI regenerates |
| Boilerplate and scaffolding | Near-zero cost, not worth a process |
| Seniority = how to implement | Seniority = what to build and what not to |
| Elaborate task decomposition | Fast feedback loops beat upfront planning |
7 / 26
A direct question for this team
What are we still doing the old way — not because it’s better, but because we haven’t stopped to ask?
8 / 26
New bottleneck: decision latency
When code is fast, unclear requirements become visible immediately.
The team blocks on decisions, not execution.
Decision speed is the new lead time.
9 / 26
New bottleneck: handoffs
Every handoff loses context that AI can’t reconstruct.
Fewer handoffs — or richer async context — aren’t just nice to have anymore.
They’re the critical path.
10 / 26
New bottleneck: review capacity
Output volume goes up.
Review capacity doesn’t.
Code isn’t safer just because AI wrote it. Judgement at review is now a genuine constraint.
11 / 26
New bottleneck: system-level thinking
AI excels at local solutions.
It doesn’t hold your architecture in mind.
That role gets more important, not less, as generation scales up.
12 / 26
New skills that compound
- Prompting as craft — specifying constraints, decomposing problems, knowing when to steer
- Critical review — reading for intent not syntax, spotting confident mistakes
- Architecture ownership — holding system coherence, resisting local-optima traps
- Decision velocity — async frameworks, fewer approval layers, reversible defaults
- Context writing — rich specs, decisions logged with rationale, less tribal knowledge
13 / 26
“The most valuable thing a senior engineer does is knowing what not to build.”
14 / 26
The skill that ties it all together
Taste and judgment — knowing good from good-enough, maintaining user perspective at speed, knowing when to ship vs keep iterating.
This is the one thing AI doesn’t have. It compounds with experience. Build it deliberately.
15 / 26
Today’s workshop
Four phases, 90 minutes.
The goal isn’t to produce a perfect plan. It’s to surface what’s actually slowing us down — and commit to three specific bets.
16 / 26
Phase 1 — Ground truth
15 minutes
Before theory, map reality.
Where has AI changed your daily work most? Where hasn’t it? What are you still doing the old way?
Format: popcorn sharing → cluster on whiteboard
17 / 26
Phase 2 — Obsolescence audit
25 minutes
Go through our ceremonies, processes, and work patterns.
Mark each: still valuable / diminishing returns / should stop
Format: 10 min solo sticky notes → 15 min group discussion
18 / 26
Questions for the audit
- What are you still doing manually that AI could handle?
- What meetings exist to compensate for slow async processes?
- What parts of our spec, design, or review process are ceremony now?
19 / 26
Phase 3 — Constraint mapping
25 minutes
In small groups, map a recent feature from idea to shipped.
Mark every waiting point, handoff, and slow decision.
Format: groups of 3-4, each map a different project → compare patterns
20 / 26
Questions for constraint mapping
- Where did we wait? For what? For whom?
- Which handoffs lost context that had to be rebuilt?
- Which decisions slowed execution that should have been defaults?
21 / 26
Phase 4 — Three bets
25 minutes
Don’t solve everything.
Pick three specific changes to try in the next 6 weeks.
22 / 26
The three bets
One thing to stop.
One thing to change how we do it.
One new practice to build — with a clear owner.
23 / 26
The constraint isn’t effort
It never really was.
The constraint is clarity, judgment, and the courage to change what isn’t working.
24 / 26
Let’s map it.
25 / 26
Scan to follow along
The Economics of Software Are Changing
manishrc.folderpress.com/decks/the-economics-of-software-are-changing
26 / 26