The hard part, Part 2

From the always thoughtful Karri Saarinen at Linear:

The hard part of design is rarely generating the form. It is understanding the problem well enough to know what and how something should exist at all. 

The whole post is a good reflection on tooling and speed and process, etc. It is a novel way of articulating “designers are still needed!” without saying that. It highlights the fact that the act of design is not going away, we all just get to choose whether we engage in it or outsource it. Which, I’d argue, has an outsized impact on whether what gets designed succeeds. Brian O’Neill says this nicely on his podcast and in some articles: there is no null choice when building a product.

The line above immediately reminded me of the engineer’s version of this from Nick Scialli that I linked to wayyyyy back in 2024. Funny how the “my role can’t be replaced yet!” conversations persist.

But here’s the problem: generating code was never the hard part.

The value I bring to my job is not generating code. I mean, I suppose that is a part of it in the end, but my value is largely in the work that happens before I generate the code: things like requirements clarification, negotiation, technical design, and tradeoff analysis.

A huge number of people literally don’t get this, and think AI (in 2026) can do it for you. It can’t. In 2030? Who knows. But the time spent with users, then reflecting on what’s valuable for them and for your business is not part of the output or execution that AI has become amazing at in 2026.