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) recently joined us on the podcast to discuss the evolving role of engineering leaders. I wanted to share two big takeaways around how product building and engineering leadership are shifting in the AI era.

“Shift out” vs. “Shift Left”, SaaS is Dead & the Rise of ”Do-It-as-a-Service” Products

Execution is no longer the bottleneck - Vision is. Build Your “Vision Muscle”

https://elc.community/home/podcasts/vision-first-leadership-and-reimagining-product-w-shift-out-do-it-as-a-service-and-jobs-to-be-done-john-amaral-root-io

#1 “Shift out” vs. “Shift Left”, SaaS is Dead & the Rise of ”Do-It-as-a-Service” Products

Traditional engineering and product thinking has pushed more responsibility left—to developers. But “shift left” often just means 

Instead of shifting responsibility earlier, 

“Customers don’t want software to help their teams work. They want software that 

 users. But AI-native products are now solving problems 

, not just supporting workflows. “Shift left” was meant to catch issues earlier—but today, it often means 

pushing more operational burden onto developers

: security, testing, observability, compliance, AI integration, and more.

 will unlock greater leverage, velocity, and satisfaction—internally and externally.

“What job is the user hiring our product to do?”

Where does our product expect users to do too much work?

Can you automate or offload the work entirely?

Design product experiences that remove steps:

 what would the product look like if it just 

Vision is now the limiting factor for impactful product development. Without a clear vision, faster teams just ship faster in the wrong direction. What’s scarce isn’t output, it’s clarity of direction.

 we can build, it’s more important than ever to clarify 

. Your job as an engineering leader isn’t just to deliver velocity. It’s to set the direction.

“My job isn’t managing sprints. It’s being out on the vision frontier.” — John Amaral

Vision—knowing what to build, for whom, and toward what outcome—is the new constraint.

AI-native tools and agents are compressing timelines—what once took months now takes weeks or days.

If your team is moving faster than ever, but lacks vision, they’ll just ship faster in the wrong direction.

Strong vision isn’t a luxury. It’s now a 

—schedule time weekly to reflect on market shifts, tech trends (like AI), and long-range opportunities.

—turn high-level ideas into clear directional guidance for your team.

—tie roadmap and sprint work back to the bigger picture: What future are we building toward? Why now?

This shift from execution-focused leadership to 

 strategy is the key to staying relevant—and accelerating what matters.

Thoughts? Reactions? What are you seeing?

Shift Out” > Shift Left, Vision is the Bottleneck, Saas is Dead & the Rise of Do-It-As-A-Service

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