Shadow Engineering Squads

I want to talk about shadow engineering squads.

Software engineering teams end up moving slower as time goes on.

The more product, the more money, the more code, the slower the changes. This is incredibly frustrating when you’re on the business team, or worse, the SUPPORT team. It hurts.

But it’s like a principle of nature. There’s more complexity. Existing revenue needs stability.

So what invariably happens is an executive decides the problem is the engineering organization and makes a shadow engineering team, internally or with contractors.

I’ve been on that team! It’s often called “labs” or “sales engineering ops”.

One time it was called project “Today Not Tomorrow! TNT” (I’m not joking)

With some small exception cases, it’s generally not a good idea. Again, engineering team = stability, legibility. The right solution is to keep working with them and accept that it’s slow. (Hint: if you’re on the business side, there’s a list of ways you can change what YOU do to help product engineering go smoother!)

Now, does this look familiar at all in the context of 2026?

It’s now A MASSIVE PROBLEM because you no longer need an engineering team, an executive, nor a check book for fancy contractors.

A single solo operator can do it to their own business. With vibe coding.

Your product, built on a collection of tools/custom code/platforms/etc, makes money and is growing.

But, you can prompt your way to a new version of it all on your own.

I’m not just talking e-commerce: imagine a sales intake process at a family factory, built on a receptionist with a phone and an old ERP that works. One coffee fueled Sunday afternoon and the owner can vibe code a new intake form that ignores all the exception cases handled by the existing one.

Here’s the most dangerous part: this new version of shadow engineering isn’t exactly bad. Sometimes, the shadow vibe coded version of a system actually makes sense to try and use.

But a lot of times, it does not.

It really depends on size.

Are you a small shop with a simple intake process?
Then try vibe coding a part of it! But, in very, very small pieces.

Do you already have an engineering team?

Then don’t make a shadow one.