We are ZERO months away from any good engineer launching their own product

"We are ZERO months away from any good engineer being able to launch their own product, potentially without funding, and keep 100% of the equity."

An interesting counterpoint to all the AI scaremongering, a well repeated quote from Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic:

"We might be 6 to 12 months away from when the model is doing most, maybe all of what Software Engineers do end to end."

I think this fundamentally misunderstands software engineering.

AI writes code. Engineers build software and systems.

Good engineers already know what AI can do. We use it every day. We know where its brilliant and where it falls apart. Its not a magic box where you throw in a rubbish prompt and get a production-ready system.

I'm seeing diminishing returns in model improvements for actual software engineering. Marginal gains at enormous cost. There's no guarantee that more compute eventually delivers perfect architecture, engineering judgement or reliable systems.

Meanwhile, plenty of non-technical founders are slapping together AI-generated products, confusing working demos with real software. Many will eventually need engineers to rescue them.

But where change is coming we ere going to see a surge in engineer-led startups. Engineers, architects and CTOs who understand how to build real systems can now do it faster, cheaper and with far fewer resources when before they couldn't afford that time.

The old proposition of someone bringing an engineer an idea, offering a tiny percentage of equity and expecting them to build the entire product is looking increasingly ridiculous.

If I'm an engineer with a good idea, why wouldn't I build it myself? I know how to architect it, understand the complexity and can estimate the effort. AI just makes me significantly more productive. Maybe I need investment. Maybe I need a team. Maybe I need neither and keep 100% of the equity.

Of course, you still need a good idea, commercial understanding and a real market.

Engineering alone doesn't create a successful business. But combine those things with the ability to actually build the product, and the opportunity is enormous.

AI isn't making good engineers obsolete. Its making them independent. And I think were about to see a lot more engineers become founders.

Not in 6-12 months. Right now.