The say-no machine
There is a huge amount of energy and interest right now around vibe-coding. At companies of every size. I see it at sub-10-person shops all the way up to orgs with thousands of employees.
And it’s hitting a wall.
The wall is IT and dev. Not entirely - but mostly. They’ve become the “say no” machine for this wave of interest.
The legit part of the obstructionism: company data getting inadvertently exposed, security and access to existing systems, the absolute necessity that vibe-code does not “just ship” to customers without testing. These concerns are real.
The not-legit part: wE aRE tHe oNeS wHo Do tHe cOdINg aRouNd HeRE, bucko
That part has got to go. Its the worst kind of gatekeeping. I literally havent seen this kind of energy in enterprise software since the cloud was born. Same same.
Imagine if only IT could be trusted to run an Excel spreadsheet. Or use Word. It would feel absurd - because it is absurd. The tools changed what was possible, the people changed to meet the tools, and that’s the whole story of personal computing writ large.
We need a walled garden for the viberz
I started my vibe-coding journey on Replit because it was nerfed-up and easy. Then I stopped because it was nerfed-up and easy.
But.
I’m coming back around on Replit as maybe the perfect compromise for many companies (not a paid endorsement!!). It has the potential to be a walled garden, a safe substrate, with lots of flexibility inside the garden. IT or dev or the CISO or whomever can define the walls. Everyone else can build inside them. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
The new MS Office
Here’s what’s sneaking up on us.
Claude Artifacts. Replit apps. Cursor-generated tools. These are becoming the new Excel. The new Word. Not in the sense that they replace them - but in the sense that everyone is now expected to be a BUILDER, not just a consumer. We are all PM now.
Salesforce saw this coming. Their move to headless isn’t just a technical architecture decision - it’s a signal that the “who gets to build” question is getting a much bigger answer.
Everyone is PM now
Which brings me to the thing I keep seeing. (reminds me of this: Wow, everythings computer)
Elena Verna on IC work as the new career flex is worth your time. The gist: individual contributors who ship are the new prestige track. Read it alongside Jack Dorsey’s recent thinking on how work itself is changing:
At 7:20, Dorsey lays out the structure he’s building toward. Collapse the hierarchy to two or three layers. Three roles only:
- IC (builder or operator) - augmented by agents, one person now has the reach that used to take a team of ten.
- DRI (owns customer outcomes, sets the roadmap, assembles ICs to execute) - the durable skill is ownership and accountability.
- Player Coach (coaches by doing, shows instead of tells) - not a reporting line. An assignment.
now everyone arrives with a working prototype (simulated or real data) that can be modified live in the room
That’s the emerging deliverable. Some kind of prototype. Where I think a lot of classic thinking goes wrong is … this prototype is not your delivered product yet. Maybe ever. It is just a way to communicate.
And to create this deliverable, the skill set you need is kind of coding - its what I personally would call vibe-coding. It’s the detailed mindset to communicate your ideas in a new medium. It has the specificity and detail normally associated with software developers AND it assumes a new level of interactivity with work AND it is aligned to the values and economic goals of the company. All of it.
The medium is changing not just for PMs but for everyone. PMs are probably just the closed to it due to the nature of the job.