Here are my takes for 2026:
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Software Engineering will (it's already happening) change dramatically - coding agents are becoming increasingly good at displacing a whole class of day to day BAU work that the role will shift from implementation to architecture and operations.
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Design will enjoy a renaissance. I'm confident that as implementation becomes cheaper and faster the velocity of software teams will be held back not by technical resource constraint but by coming up with, and refining good ideas. Solving the right problems well will be more relevant than ever.
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Team compositions will shift. Historically I would've said technical software teams would be composed of somewhere around 1:5 or 1:10 design - eng. I think this will drop to be closer to 1:1. It's unclear what the PM role will become. I can see a big role for good product thinkers to lean more into the PMM space or shift up the organisation if the organisation allows it.
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Technical and Product debt will balloon. While velocity will be rapid it's already apparent to me that product decision making is under increasing back pressure from technical velocity - and this is leading to a new form of product debt. It's also apparent that technical debt will build a lot faster if organisations are not highly disciplined and thoughtful about the ways they metric progress.
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Execution remains as relevant and ever.
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