The disappearing middle of software work
The center of software work is moving.
I think the center of software work is moving.
The middle of software work has been the most important part for a long time. You started with an idea, and eventually you shipped something, but almost all of the effort lived in between. Turning intent into something real meant opening the codebase, booting up the environment, and writing the code. That middle absorbed most of the time, attention, and craft of software teams.
The shift is happening
What we’re witnessing now is a compression of that middle space. The distance between “I want this” and “here it is” is shrinking rapidly. AI assistants can generate code, design tools can produce production-ready assets, and the gap between imagination and implementation is closing.
What remains essential
But here’s what’s interesting: as the middle shrinks, the edges become more important. The beginning—knowing what to build, having taste, understanding users—matters more than ever. And the end—shipping reliably, maintaining quality, iterating based on feedback—that’s still irreplaceable.
The new shape of work
The work isn’t disappearing. It’s reshaping. Teams that thrived on deep technical execution are learning to apply that same rigor to product thinking and user understanding. The craft is evolving, not vanishing.
This is just the beginning of a larger conversation about how creative work transforms in an AI-assisted world.