How AI is rewriting the rules of work for the specialist Premium

Erran Berger, the Vice President of Product Engineering at LinkedIn, thinks the former type of division of labour is rapidly disappearing

The process of building technology, for the past few decades, was defined by rigid assembly lines. A product manager wrote the specs. A designer created the visuals. A front-end engineer built the interface. And a back-end developer handled the data. Everyone was focused on their task or function within the larger organisation, sticking to their lanes. Erran Berger, the Vice President of Product Engineering at LinkedIn, thinks that type of division of labour is rapidly disappearing, a prediction that could unsettle traditionalists in the software world.

Sitting on the executive team of the world’s largest professional network, Mr. Berger is observing a fundamental shift in how work gets done, not just within LinkedIn’s own walls, but across the 1.3 billion members that make up the platform’s “Economic Graph.” His central thesis is that the future belongs not to the hyper-specialist, but to the individual who can take an idea from concept to launch entirely on their own, aided by a suite of artificial intelligence tools — he calls this breed the “Full Stack Builder.”

When Mr. Berger joined the platform in 2009, it was essentially a digital rolodex for resumes. Now, those behind the platform are performing multi-speciality tasks. Product managers are writing code. Engineers are generating design concepts. As a result, the gap between having an idea and shipping a product is closing fast.

This creates a paradox that Mr. Berger is keen to navigate: if AI can generate code and design interfaces, what happens to the craft? He insists that the “maestro” is still essential. Just because a machine can generate code doesn’t mean it is secure, maintainable, or efficient enough to load quickly in low-bandwidth markets like India. The role of the human shifts from labourer to editor, from creator to curator. The domain expertise remains vital, but the capacity to execute expands dramatically.

This philosophy extends beyond engineering and into the very heart of LinkedIn’s business model: recruiting.

For years, the recruitment industry has been bogged down by what Mr. Berger calls “toil.” Recruiters spend vast majority of their days staring at search bars, filtering lists, and sending generic outreach messages. It is repetitive, low-value work that burns people out. Mr. Berger’s strategy is to hand this entire stack of drudgery over to AI.