For most of my life, I and everyone else in software engineering “built the machine” in that we collected requirements, designed an architecture, conducted detailed design, coded the software, ran the test cases, wrote the documentation and released the system to the customer. With the emergence of Generative AI, we are going through a major shift. Instead of building the machine, we are now increasingly building the machine that builds the machine. The systems we used to build will now be generated based on intent that we expressed and gave to a suite of agents that will build the system for us. In some ways, this is not new as factories and the production line were invented to automate production. But now it’s the design and not the production that is automated. That will change the role of many professionals. So, ask yourself, are you building the machine or are you building the machine that builds the machine?