For 50 years, writing code was expensive, so engineering culture institutionalized rationing: roadmaps, RFCs, prioritization meetings, scope reviews. ## The No Engineer role Scarcity created a job: the No Engineer. Their function was to conserve expensive engineering capacity through veto authority. - *"That won't scale."* - *"We don't have bandwidth."* - *"That's out of scope."* - *"We need a design doc first."* Every "no" saved real money. The No Engineer's judgment was the rationing system, and for 50 years that judgment was economically rational. ## What LLMs change Code is cheap now. The rationing constraint is gone. When code generation costs approach zero, the No Engineer's function becomes friction — not value. The asymmetry is decisive: while the No Engineer explains why something can't be done, the Yes Engineer has already shipped three versions of it. ## Cross-domain applications - **Organizational design**: process roles built on scarcity assumptions become obsolete when the scarcity is eliminated — audit which roles exist because of cost, not because of quality - **Career positioning**: velocity is now the differentiating capability; engineers who default to iteration beat engineers who default to review - **Product strategy**: the minimum viable product cycle compresses when code generation is cheap — "ship and learn" replaces "plan and approve" **Source:** Jonathan Ross (@jonathanross321), X thread, May 2026 — https://x.com/jonathanross321/status/2049901596054798774