Becoming Is Better Than Being

LinkedIn's Full Stack Builder model reimagines product development for an era where the skills required to do your job will change by 70% by 2030. This approach empowers builders to take ideas to market regardless of their role in the stack, collapsing organizational complexity back to craftsmanship.

The traditional product development process has become unnecessarily complex at scale companies. What started as a simple flow—research a problem, spec it out, design it, code it, launch it, iterate—expanded into countless sub-steps requiring specialized roles. This organizational complexity slows companies down precisely when they need to be more adaptive, as the pace of change now exceeds the pace of response.

The Full Stack Builder model addresses this by creating a fluid interaction between humans and machines. Builders focus on five key traits where humans excel: vision (developing compelling stances about the future), empathy (understanding unmet needs), communication (rallying others around ideas), creativity (imagining possibilities beyond the obvious), and most importantly, judgment (making high-quality decisions in complex situations). Everything else is automated through purpose-built agents.

Implementing this model requires investment in three areas: platform (rearchitecting core systems so AI can reason over them), tools (building specialized agents for different functions), and culture (changing mindsets and incentives). The cultural shift is particularly challenging—simply providing tools isn't enough. Teams need incentives, motivation, and examples of success to embrace new ways of working.

For leaders considering this approach, patience is essential. While startups can adopt this model from scratch, transforming established organizations requires upfront investment in platforms and customized tools. Progress should be measured by experiment velocity multiplied by quality, divided by time.

For individual contributors, this represents both opportunity and necessity. The incentives are aligned—organizations need to become more agile, while individuals need to stay relevant as jobs evolve. Rather than waiting for formal reorganization, the best approach is to adopt a full stack mindset immediately, using whatever tools are available to demonstrate end-to-end building capability.

As Tomer puts it, "Becoming is better than being." The goal isn't to reach a fixed state but to continuously grow and evolve. Organizations that embrace this philosophy will be more nimble, adaptive, and resilient—able to match the pace of change with their pace of response.