# Brendan Cody-Kenny: Cheap implementation changes who is technical.

Technical Due Diligence for Software M&A https://sub.xiliary.com/p/brendancodykenny

### 2026-10-07 update #ai #careers #education #product #software-engineering
Cheap implementation changes who is technical.
- I worked in sysadmin and network operations. I think I know what good software feels like. I didn't need to spend those years writing application code to learn that.
- Software was always a team effort: spec with product, requirements in Jira, implementation in code, architecture in someone's head, and whether it works with the user.
- Every perspective has a bias. Engineers can care too much about internals and non-functional requirements. Product can miss implementation constraints. Tests inherit whoever wrote them.
- AI makes implementation cheap enough that those boundaries blur. A user can be much closer to building and testing the thing they actually need.
- The interesting role may sit between a human-focused senior architect and an ex-engineer product person. Some CS, half a design course, liberal arts, lots of building.

https://sub.xiliary.com/p/brendancodykenny/posts/59/cheap-implementation-changes-who-is-technical