You Already Have What It Takes to Build

If you’ve ever said “I’m not technical,” this is for you.

If I asked you to build and deliver a product with AI, would you tell me you aren’t technical enough? Would you tell me that it’s an intimidating process, or that you would need help from someone more technical? I think AI gives us an opportunity to re-frame this mental model of what we are and are not capable of - and I’d like to challenge you to re-position your strengths.

There’s an odd focus on “technical vs. non-technical” in the software industry, and we assign one label or the other to roles. Product Managers aren’t technical (except, they are), and Engineering Managers are technical (except when they aren’t). I don’t think the binary framing is accurate at all, and I think it’s getting in our way as roles shift and AI moves into our organizations.

I always thought of myself as someone who just had enough other technical people around him to figure stuff out - to “fake it”. I was coached into my first job in tech, later being told by my manager that they weren’t sure if I was going to work out - but that I had learned quickly and was doing great. I would be accused of being “a sponge” with technology, when in my eyes all I was doing was remembering stuff and playing with it.

This extends even to recent history for me, spending nearly 8 years in management without touching code and still being told I’m one of the more technical leaders. This accusation could not have come from my experience with the frameworks and technology that we were using - I had never used them myself. Instead, it came from my mindset about how I approach learning, being curious, supporting others, and my own accountability for being able to participate in decision making.

AI is re-distributing experience

Building with AI is a new beast - and it is a massive equalizer if you are willing and able to see it that way and leverage it. The difference has never been smaller between someone developing software their entire career and someone who has never touched code in their life. It’s true that seasoned software developers know better what good software looks like, and perhaps can better steer a coding agent. But, do they know what good product looks like? Good design? Good UX?

Understanding technology is not the hard part anymore. The hard part is making decisions about what is and is not useful to others. What makes a product delightful to use. How to understand how your users are interacting with the product. That has always been the hard part.

Taking advantage of this moment is about seeing obstacles as opportunities, about taking the time to find a relationship with technology, and re-framing how you see yourself. There are absolutely new skills required to build successfully with AI, but those skills aren’t hidden away in a university degree somewhere or a book you haven’t read, they’re sitting right there in that AI Agent you probably use every day.

You have a tool now that will answer your most basic questions about how software development works, without judgement. This tool will build software for you, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but with persistence it will get you to functional software. It’ll review it’s own software, it will help fix it’s own mistakes, and if you are willing to be curious - it will teach you what you need to learn.

What makes people “technical”?

I’ve been thinking about what actually earns someone the label of being technical, and I don’t think it has anything to do with technology. It is perhaps similar to what makes someone seen as a writer, or a mechanic, or a leader. It is embodying what others see and expect from that role - that’s it. Writers write - we can all write, but they write in ways that others see, that meets a certain bar, and they do it repeatedly.

What do people you’ve thought of as technical do to earn that label in your mind? Do they always know the answer? Or are they curious about a problem and willing to invest a little time in trying to understand it better? Sure, over a long career of being in technical roles, you accumulate understanding that’s available immediately - but a lot of that knowledge is available to all of us now. The same thing happens in Design, or Product, or Sales, or Leadership. Each domain has knowledge that accumulates over time.

The problem I have with declaring someone technical is that it really doesn’t say anything about what they know. Are they technical in a particular language or framework? Have they worked with frontend or backend? What about mobile software, or large high performance clusters? Hardware or software? It doesn’t say anything about their experience. And yet, somehow, it makes those without that experience feel like there’s a barrier there they can’t step across.

There’s no barrier, just get curious and start exploring.

You are technical

I think if you search in your own experience you’ve learned a new skill that you didn’t have at first. This skill, when you first approached it, was difficult and full of challenge and frustration. But you got curious about it, you accepted that there was some time investment needed to become good at this skill, and you put the time in to experiment, practice, learn, adapt, evolve, and eventually you became better at the skill. Maybe you did this because you had to for a job, or maybe you did this because you enjoyed the process, or because you wanted to be around the other people who were doing this.

This willingness to approach the challenge and work through the learning process is all you need to build software with AI, to become technical. What’s new is that you have a relatively inexpensive tool that can answer a LOT of the questions you might have about how to build software, how to design software, and how to get un-stuck. It’s not quite the same as having a trusted friend that you can go to, but if your obstacle is understanding how to navigate a problem - the robots can help.

Getting support beyond AI

What I’m observing right now is that many people are building in isolation. This world of AI makes you feel like everyone around you is ahead, they’re all cruising and building hundreds of apps and shipping every week.

They aren’t.

While a few may have found a recipe that works for them, what’s likely is that they’ve accepted a tradeoff they aren’t talking about. Building with AI is not easy, it’s not magic, and while it provides the illusion of available velocity - the trick is to actually move slower than you feel like you should be able to move. Be thoughtful, experiment, play, and take time to think about the experience you want to build. Anyone can skip that step and just build - writing code is now the un-differentiated part of building software.

You may still get stuck, and I think we need more communities of builders who are working together to support each other. We need to share techniques, help with basics of getting started, and support people through all the other parts of product delivery that an AI Agent can’t do for you. If you are building a community like this, or if you are interested in joining a community like this, please reach out - I’d like to make that connection.

Make it human

Context is everything, and the thing that will make you good at building software will be how you think about quality, taste, and the effort you put into weaving your unique style into whatever you build. This has very little to do with a technical background. In fact, I’d argue that feeling like you are experienced at building software will cause you to focus on the building and miss out on the thinking. The further from software you are, the more likely it is that you are going to bring something unique into the world.

So, go build something, and if you feel stuck please give me a holler - I’m happy to help.