{"slug": "software-engineers-used-to-score-goals-now-we-keep-them-out", "title": "Software Engineers Used to Score Goals, Now We Keep Them Out", "summary": "Software engineers are shifting from feature development to infrastructure and stability roles as AI tools enable non-engineers to build features directly, according to a CTO. The change requires new hiring criteria and motivation strategies for engineers who now act as goalkeepers rather than strikers.", "body_md": "[← All posts](../index.html)\n\n# Software Engineers Used to Score Goals, Now We Keep Them Out\n\n[An apology to my fellow nerds for the football analogy (or soccer, if you insist). Myself I'm not a huge football fan, but the analogy was there and the time is right]\n\nWe used to be the strikers. For years, engineers were the ones leading the charge on product, bridging between ideas and execution and being the ones announcing \"we delivered this and that new features.\" With the emergence of the builder role, that's changing. The engineering role is starting to look a lot more like what DevEx and Production teams did in pre-AI orgs: making sure the org's builders can build a stable, scalable app - not scoring the goals, just making sure nothing gets past us.\n\nAs the CTO of *[redacted]* the number of feature-bearing PRs “authored” by my team is roughly 1:5 to ones by non-engineers, and I say with certainty this number will increase. Order of operation changing too, if in the past a “too ambitious” feature or an incorrectly designed one would have been gated on the technical review, now a builder (formerly the PM) have already built it → showed it to management (or worse, the customers) → got approval → and only then pass it to the engineer that can flag the pitfalls. And this engineer - well I don't envy them (but I am them), they needs to have a very strong spine to push back, and even then, that will have a meaningful effect only org culture accommodate this.\n\nAs engineering leaders, we have to catch up too - motivating a striker is pretty easy (score, celebrate, repeat), but motivating a goalkeeper is a different job: the wins are invisible, the failures are very visible, and success is measured by what didn't happen. And the same goes for hiring - the goalkeeper role calls for a different personality type and a different mentality - people wired for building trust, longevity and quiet success stories rather than the glory and fame. The engineers we'll need next are probably not the ones we optimized our interviews for over the last decade.\n\n\"The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution.\", Einstein.\n\nAnd for those of you saying \"I know who Messi is, but who is Neuer?\" - well, that's where my analogy breaks (or maybe it doesn't. Football fans, please help). Here's the thing: for those of us who love problem solving, who love constantly finding new applications for the available technology - these are golden times. And the smarter the AI gets, the better it will get. Less writing React components and setting up the API between service A and service B, and more answering fundamental questions like how to build inherently secure apps, how to make GenAI + builders produce code that's actually deliverable, and how the builder-coder (formerly known as product-R&D) org should be structured to tap into this potential growth.\n\nExciting times ahead!\n\n*This is the first post on this blog - more to come. Subscribe to get the next ones.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/software-engineers-used-to-score-goals-now-we-keep-them-out", "canonical_source": "https://eran.pinh.as/posts/software-engineers-used-to-score-goals-now-we-keep-them-out", "published_at": "2026-07-08 09:18:26+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-08 09:30:01.803069+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "generative-ai", "developer-tools", "ai-agents", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Einstein"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/software-engineers-used-to-score-goals-now-we-keep-them-out", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/software-engineers-used-to-score-goals-now-we-keep-them-out.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/software-engineers-used-to-score-goals-now-we-keep-them-out.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/software-engineers-used-to-score-goals-now-we-keep-them-out.jsonld"}}