Allie Miller

Non‑engineers Building Tools Strain Professional Developers

I struggle with the phrase “everyone’s a coder now.” And I hesitate to post because I don’t want you to read this as gatekeeping. If anything, I want more people to build, but in a stronger, more functional way. Building any sort of software is incredibly empowering. Even creating a tiny tool gives folks what I call “pro-poster syndrome”, where they feel more capable and competent than ever. What was solely reserved for the most technical among us is now - at least at a basic level - becoming accessible to anyone with a few bucks a month to spare. But overwhelmingly, and especially in the last few weeks, I am getting more and more frustrated notes from developers at large companies. Yesterday, I heard about salespeople at one company asking for repo access. Earlier, a startup engineer told me his life has been hijacked by non-engineers. “All of their vibe coded apps don’t work.” I spoke with one company whose marketing and finance and partnership teams dropped the ball on their product launch tasks in favor of tinkering with Claude Code / Codex / Replit. Product and design seem to navigate this better. They’re closer to the work, and in many orgs, already have a path to contribute responsibly. Maybe this is a blip and the energy among business users will die down, but I would bet against that. Companies need to figure out how to enable AI-first problem-solving without wrecking the sanity of an entire department, turning engineering into an endless support desk, and derailing critical work in the business. The future is more builders, yes. But most companies are still missing the systems.