The new era of software engineering has an uncomfortable truth.

Most serious engineers won’t like what I’m about to say.

Most engineers pride themselves on mastering every detail of the systems they build. But in the AI era, understanding your systems is overrated.

The pride of an engineer is to understand. To know every input, output, dependency, edge case. To be the expert in the room.

But software engineering is not like engineering in the physical world.

In most cases, the stakes are lower. If your app crashes, users reload the page or file a bug. If a bridge collapses, people die.

This capped downside matters — especially before you have paying users. It shifts the calculus.

So here's the uncomfortable new reality for those used to being the expert in the room:

Pareto Principle will dominate not just output. It will become the model for how well we understand our systems.

At best, you’ll understand 80% of what’s going on under the hood. That last 20% — the fine-tuned understanding that engineers used to pride themselves on — will carry diminishing returns.

Sorry, detail lovers. Precision is now a luxury.

AI will generate, refactor, and deploy faster than we can fully follow. Codebases will evolve faster than we can model them in our heads.

Understanding becomes retrospective, not real-time.

If you want to compete today as a builder, speed is your edge.

Slow, methodical engineering won’t win in a world where software can be spun up, scrapped, and rebuilt in hours.

Deep understanding is now optional. But velocity isn’t.