Have you ever felt like building even the tiniest feature takes forever? Not because the feature is complex, but because it has to pass through a maze of steps—PM writes specs, designer makes mockups, devs wait for final handoff… By the time it’s live, weeks (sometimes months) have gone by.

This whole process was invented for a reason. Back when writing software was slow and expensive, we needed to protect developer time. Every detail had to be perfect before a single line of code got written. It made sense then. But now? Things are changing fast.

Imagine a world where generating code from a prompt is normal. Adding a new feature could take hours, not weeks. Suddenly, the layers of planning and handoff feel less necessary. Instead of endless specs and user interviews before anything gets built, we could just ship a version, test it in the wild, and quickly improve it. Real usage becomes the research.

That kind of speed would blur the lines between product managers and engineers. Maybe even erase them. You’d have a new kind of role—call them product engineers. People who don’t just write code, but also think deeply about users, design, and the market. They’d own the entire loop: research, design, build, test, iterate. End to end.

Of course, that’s a tall order. It asks engineers to bring a product mindset, and maybe designers and PMs to pick up more technical skills too. But the payoff could be huge: less friction, faster learning, and products that feel closer to what users actually need.

I don’t know exactly how this will play out, but I keep coming back to one thought: maybe the future isn’t about bigger teams or stricter processes. Maybe it’s about giving more power to smaller groups of product engineers who can move quickly and build things that truly matter.