Not Having Technical Skills Can Be Your Biggest Strength

I'm an engineer. And I've been thinking for a while that the edge that's given me until now is about to stop meaning what it used to.

Several analyses of the world's wealthiest people agree on one thing: engineering is, by a wide margin, the university degree that shows up most often among billionaires with a higher education. The exact percentage varies by study and year, but the trend holds steady report after report. It's not a coincidence.

Why engineering has dominated until now

Engineering training builds something very specific: logical, analytical, structured thinking. It teaches you to break a complex problem down into manageable parts, which is exactly what it takes to run something at scale.

An engineer doesn't just understand technology, they know how to design it. On top of that, most engineering curricula teach you to evaluate errors and manage variables to optimize resources, a skill that translates almost frictionlessly into strategic decision-making and business risk.

The ones who've gone furthest are the ones who combined that technical foundation with business vision, proving that engineering is a solid platform for leading through uncertainty.

That said, it was never a requirement. A significant share of the biggest fortunes comes from people who dropped out of university, or who studied finance and business instead, which is the next most common background on those lists.

This, to me, is changing little by little

The technical layer that seemed impassable to so many people for years is dissolving. And as that happens, I think each person's intrinsic capabilities (not what they studied, but how they think and make decisions) are going to matter more and more. I wrote about this from another angle here: trying and getting it wrong has never been cheaper than it is now, and that's exactly the advantage opening up.

Here's an example: ten, or even five years ago, the engineer who never stopped solving problems and putting out fires was the most valued person on the team, because they were the one you called when something broke.

Today, with AI, that role is quietly changing hands. We're spending less time chasing what's broken and more time building what's new. It's a shift in direction: from looking at our mistakes to imagining what's ahead, building new ideas and projects in far less time than it used to take. The question is no longer so much "what's going wrong that needs fixing," but "what more can we do now that we feel more capable?"

What starts to matter more than a degree

The people who are going to make the most of this are the ones willing to experiment, the ones who understand that learning no longer happens only in a classroom, or even just by watching YouTube tutorials, which worked so well for people my age.

Now it's time to actually build, to lose the fear of trying.

The university degree that opened so many doors for generations stops being a required condition (it's still useful, but it's no longer the only filter, or even the most important one). The bar now gets set by something else: curiosity, a willingness to get it wrong in public, and real drive to build.

To give you an example of something I'm building with AI: a very simple project, but one that puts into perspective how we're moving from using tools to being able to build them and actually own them.

Since I started my career I've used Microsoft OneNote almost daily. It's like a notebook where I jot down my day-to-day tasks, along with things like interesting tools or topics I'd like to learn. It genuinely helped me a lot: I never forgot what I had to do at work (well, I did forget, but since I had it written down, I'd read it and remember again).

I went through 4 different jobs with that setup, and did everything with it. It looks very basic, but that's where I keep my goals, what I've learned, my day-to-day tasks, courses I've taken on AI, marketing, branding, all of it.

So what happened? I started getting tired of filling it in all the time. It felt like the infinite scroll of TikTok and Instagram, except for pending tasks, and I started to resent it. Every time that feeling came up I'd think maybe I should do it differently, but it all looked the same to me, and I'd lose motivation. In the end, I built an app with Claude Code.

That app lets me organize tasks by calendar and due date. Tired of that view? No problem: I switch to a Kanban-style view that shows me what's pending, in progress, and done. Tired again? The tool scores tasks by priority and urgency, to help me focus on what matters most that week.

I even built myself a dashboard (this one's a bit nerdy) to track how I'm doing month by month, and what goals I have short, medium, and long term. I'm still improving it.

Some day I don't even feel like opening the list? That's fine too: I built in an AI assistant that tells me what tasks I have for the week and sorts them for me. One day I had a headache and talked to it: it told me what I could do that would take the least effort. It sounds simple, but having a companion in a career I think is more solitary than it seems, like a professional one, always helps.

Why am I telling you all this?

I am an engineer, yes. I can code, but only the basics. And I built this in a week, so the technology would adapt to me, not the other way around.

It's incredible, but a change this simple has made me feel more productive, more satisfied with what I do, and clearer about where I'm headed.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and told him something I'm becoming more and more sure of: if you have a clear idea in your head, use an AI and start building it. It's not just that the result is incredible, the process of getting there is where you'll learn the most.

Thanks for reading.