In the AI Era, Being T-Shaped is Not Enough. You Need to Be Full-Stack!

It will happen way faster than you think

“In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends, there’s this betting pool for the first year that there is a one-person billion-dollar company.”
— Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (source)

For years, early-career professionals were advised to avoid being “I-Shaped” and work toward becoming “T-Shaped.” An I-Shaped professional is someone who masters one skill but knows little about related areas. In contrast, a T-Shaped professional has deep expertise in one skill but also a basic understanding of several related disciplines. The value of being T-Shaped lies in the ability to collaborate effectively and know when to seek help from others with different specializations.

A Bit Of History

During the Industrial Revolution, society saw the value of super-specialization. A worker assigned to a single, specific task would, after enough repetition, deliver consistent results more efficiently. By breaking down the process of building a product into a series of specialized tasks, teams could assign workers to narrowly defined roles, creating an efficient and predictable system—the assembly line.

In an assembly line, workers didn’t need to understand what their colleagues were doing. As long as each specialist performed their task as expected, the process flowed smoothly. Responsibility for ensuring all the pieces fit together fell on someone else, typically an overseer or architect, who orchestrated the entire process.

Fast forward a few decades, and a new type of work emerged: knowledge work.

“Knowledge work can be differentiated from other forms of work by its emphasis on non-routine problem-solving that requires a combination of convergent and divergent thinking.” — Wikipedia

Initially, organizations tried to apply assembly-line principles to knowledge workers. However, they soon realized that the output of knowledge work is not as predictable. Knowledge workers rarely repeat the same task without variation. Every new problem requires a new solution. Despite this variability, their work still needs to integrate with others who are also producing unpredictable outcomes.

This unpredictability created the demand for T-Shaped professionals—specialists who could understand how their peers worked and find ways to integrate their contributions.

The Rise of the Full-Stack Professional

Now, in the age of AI, it’s time to reevaluate how we work again. You’ve probably already come across AI tools that can replace some of your colleagues, either entirely or partially. Today, you might not be at risk of being replaced by AI, but sooner than you think, that could change. Soon, AI will handle some of your tasks, making you more productive. At first, these AI tools might make mistakes, and you’ll need to guide them. Many people dismiss these early mistakes, assuming AI won’t improve—but it will.

As AI improves and can perform a knowledge worker’s tasks with high accuracy (even if not perfectly), a question will arise: Why keep an employee whose work is mostly automated when you can have another worker who partners with the AI, guiding it when necessary?

For example, if AI becomes capable of creating usable, desirable mobile app designs, why would companies need as many designers? Maybe one designer would suffice. Worse yet, some companies might ask their product managers (PMs) to provide the AI with the relevant insights directly, based on their research. If the AI makes mistakes, the PM can point them out, and the AI will iterate on the design.

The same logic applies to the rest of the software development team. Not long ago, full-stack engineers who could build web apps from start to finish were common. Now, we have front-end and back-end engineers. But these roles will merge again at many companies—not just because of AI, but also due to economic pressures like the end of the zero-interest-rate era.

If you’re a front-end engineer who refuses to learn about back-end engineering, you’ll likely be replaced by a back-end engineer who’s picked up front-end skills. Handling both jobs won’t be as hard as you think—the AI will take care of most of the heavy lifting. You just need to guide it when it stumbles.

The One-Person Billion-Dollar Company

As Sam Altman predicts, one day, there will be a one-person billion-dollar company. That individual will be truly full-stack, handling everything—marketing, sales, customer support, product management, design, and engineering. With the help of AI, this person won’t be distinguishable from a company run by thousands of people today.

That person could be you. Or, at the very least, you’ll soon be doing the work that five of your T-Shaped colleagues do today.