Somewhere between the last sprint retro and the newest model release, "what makes a good engineer" quietly shifted. Nobody sent a memo. But if you listen to the people running today's biggest tech companies, a new shape of employee is winning, and it's not the one most of us were told to aim for.
One tech executive recently put a name to it: companies are done hiring for "T-shaped" people. They want "X-shaped" ones instead. It's a small phrase, but it's worth unpacking, especially if you're a developer trying to figure out what to actually spend your learning time on this year.
What "X-shaped" means
You've probably heard "T-shaped" before. The wide bar across the top is broad, general knowledge across a bunch of areas. The long stem going down is real depth in one specific thing. A T-shaped backend engineer, for example, can hold a decent conversation about design, product, and infra, but their actual craft is, say, distributed systems.
Jess Hertz, a chief operating officer at a major tech company, put it this way on the podcast Rapid Response: hiring used to be about finding the T. Now it's about finding people with several great skills instead of just one, multiple "spikes" instead of a single stem. Picture the letter X: two strong lines crossing, each one a real strength, meeting in the middle.
"AI is really pushing towards what I'm calling X-shaped people." — Jess Hertz
She described these people as folks who can move fast between domains: someone who can pick up a new part of the stack, sit in on a design review and actually contribute, or dig into a data problem without waiting on a specialist. Not a master of everything, but sharp enough in more than one lane to ship real work solo. Her own career path fits the pattern too, worth noting: she moved from a legal background into running company operations at scale, a lawyer who ended up owning the org chart.
Why "just get really good at one thing" isn't the whole answer anymore
Here's the part that hits differently if you write code for a living. AI tools have made it much faster to go from "no idea how this works" to "can ship something usable" in a new area. A first draft of a script, a rough API integration, a passable UI, a first-pass data pipeline: a lot of that used to require finding the specialist on the team. Now it's a starting point almost anyone can get to.
That changes what's actually valuable. If AI can get someone 60% of the way into your specialty, the skill that's harder to replace isn't the specialty itself; it's the ability to pick up something new fast, apply it correctly, and catch when the AI's output is subtly wrong. Hertz's phrase for this is blunt but useful: being a solid seven-out-of-ten at something even when it's not your main job.
It's not just one COO saying this
This isn't an isolated hot take. Anthropic president Daniela Amodei has said communication, curiosity, and people skills matter as much as technical depth now, because AI already handles a lot of the pure technical lifting. JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon has told workers directly to build critical thinking and communication skills, the things AI still struggles to fake.
The numbers back this up too. According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, which surveyed over a thousand employers across 55 economies, roughly 59 out of every 100 workers globally will need meaningful reskilling or upskilling by 2030 just to keep up with how fast skills are changing. That's this decade, not some distant future. The T-to-X shift is turning into an actual hiring filter, not just a LinkedIn talking point.
Practically, how do you build a second spike without burning out
Pick one adjacent skill, not five random ones. If you're a backend dev, learning enough frontend to ship a small feature end-to-end is a smarter second spike than trying to become a designer.
Let AI get you most of the way into unfamiliar territory, then spend your real effort on understanding and verifying, not on typing the first draft yourself.
Write up what you learn somewhere public or semi-public. It cements the skill, and it's genuinely useful to someone else stuck on the same thing.
Ask to pair or review code outside your usual area now and then. Exposure builds the second spike faster than reading about it does.
Don't let your main strength go soft while you build a new one. X-shaped still means genuinely good in more than one place, not thinly spread everywhere.
Conclusion
If even large companies are now looking for employees who are up-to-date and have intermediate-level expertise across multiple areas, it is a clear signal that the expectations of the workplace are changing. For employees and working professionals, this means it is time to rethink how we approach our careers. Adapting to change, continuously learning, and becoming comfortable with new technologies are no longer optional. Along with technical expertise, skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, creativity, adaptability, and decision-making are becoming increasingly important. The future of work will require professionals who can learn quickly, work across different areas, and respond confidently to new challenges. Instead of resisting change, we need to prepare ourselves for it and keep evolving with the workplace.
FAQ
*What does "X-shaped employee" mean? *
A term from tech executive Jess Hertz for workers with strong skills in more than one area, instead of broad general knowledge plus a single deep specialty (the older T-shaped model).
How is it different from T-shaped?
T-shaped is one deep skill plus broad general knowledge. X-shaped is multiple genuinely deep skills, or "spikes," crossing each other.
Why now?
AI has sped up how fast someone can get competent in something new, which is changing what companies see as valuable and hard to replace.
Is T-shaped dead?
No. Deep expertise still matters. This is about adding a second or third real strength on top of it, not swapping depth for shallow variety.
How do I actually get more X-shaped?
Pick one adjacent skill, use AI to speed up the learning curve, and document what you learn so it helps your team too.
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