The Dynamic Between Domain Experts & Developers Has Shifted
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dbreunig.com »
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During the peak of mobile app madness, iOS and Android developers would often find themselves cornered by friends, relatives, and random people at parties.
“I’ve got a great idea for an app…”
More often than not, this dreaded sentence would be followed by a hard sell when the developer didn’t display adequate enthusiasm. If the developer didn’t act fast and feign the exact right level of approval — enough to communicate they ‘got’ the idea but not so much that they’d be asked to build it — the idea guy would advance onto hashing out NDAs, equity allocations, and asking when coding can start.
Recently, I’ve noticed the AI era is a bit different. The balance of power has shifted. Builders need domain experts as much as domain experts need builders.
You can no longer simply copy an app model with a few improvements or obsess over user feedback as you sharpen your prototype towards product-market fit.
To build a differentiated AI product you need training data and examples curated by a domain expert.
I don't think the role of a software engineer is going to go away, but I do think personally, I'm not gonna cut it anymore as "just a software engineer."
The real value is in pairing someone who knows how these AI systems work with someone who knows how to get deep with a real world problem.
