The Future Is Fewer Engineers but Better Teammates

In the era of Claude code and increasingly capable AI, one thing is becoming clear to me: soft skills are about to become your biggest edge.

As AI takes care of the heavy lifting, code generation, bug fixing, even entire components – teams won’t need to grow just to ship features. I believe we’re heading toward smaller, more autonomous teams. And that means how you work with others will matter more than ever.

It might sound counterintuitive, but being more autonomous means you need to collaborate better. That’s what makes a small team actually work. AI won’t change that – it’ll make it more important. With more bandwidth, teams will spend more time discussing implementation strategies and choosing better paths, not just hacking away at code.

You can’t hide behind output when everyone’s output is high. AI will raise the floor on technical execution. Soft skills raise the ceiling on what a team can achieve.

People are often surprised when I tell them Glider’s team has only three engineers. What makes it work, I think, is our willingness to rely on each other—not just to ship code, but to explore ideas, share best practices, and use AI to speed up the process. We don’t pretend we’re not using it. We embrace it, and we’re honest about that.

I know a lot of engineers still feel weird about saying how much they use AI. I get it. It’s not even always about ego – it’s about watching your profession change right in front of you, while you’re still in the chair doing it.

Claude was the wildest shift I’ve experienced in my career. One day I was using Gemini to assist me; the next I was letting Claude handle entire feature builds, while I steered the direction. It changed how I see my role entirely.

As with anything in life, you can see the cup as half empty or half full. I don’t know if I’m more concerned or excited about what AI will bring – but only one of those feelings is useful. So I choose to embrace it. Not because it writes perfect code, but because it makes me a better engineer. Not by simply speeding me up, but by letting me deliver better in every way.

And that circles back to soft skills. As teams get smaller and our tools get stronger, there will be more room for experimentation, faster MVPs, and richer collaboration. Everyone will have a voice in shaping what gets built.

The good news? Being a decent human gets you halfway there. Being kind, being clear, being easy to work with – that’s the kind of thing that will come a long way when the code is no longer what sets you apart.