über-scalable Profession

In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb classifies professions as scalable and non-scalable. Huh? Here’s what he calls the non-scalable:
“Some professions, such as dentists, consultants, or massage professionals, cannot be scaled: there is a cap on the number of patients or clients you can see in a given period of time…In these professions, no matter how highly paid, your income is subject to gravity.”
And the scalable ones?
“Other professions allow you to add zeroes to your output (and your income), if you do well, at little or no extra effort...If you are an idea person, you do not have to work hard, only think intensely. You do the same work whether you produce a hundred units or a thousand.”

Software development was always one of the scalable professions. In recent times, it has become über-scalable. Sam Gerstenzang has a few examples:
“WhatsApp had 450 million monthly users and just 32 engineers when it was acquired (for $16 billion). Imgur scaled to over 40 billion monthly image views with just seven engineers. Instagram had 30 million users and just 13 engineers when it was acquired for $1 billion dollars.”
If that is the trend, Gerstenzang muses:
“The potential impact of the lone software engineer is soaring. How long before we have a billion-dollar acquisition offer for a one-engineer startup?”
All this has happened largely because:
“We are building a common core of software tools and platforms that allows one to write less code, accomplish more, and reach more users. We are moving towards software as Legos.”

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, famously said:
“Software is eating the world.”
And with “software as Legos”, Gerstenzang says:
“Software is eating software development.”
But the snake eating its own tail could prove to be a good thing:
“As software becomes a high-impact, low-skill trade, we decouple the technical ability and experience needed to write tricky software from the ability to solve problems for people.”
So who knows, perhaps:
“Tomorrow, that billion-dollar startup acquisition might not need an engineer at all.”

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