When senior engineers move away from hands-on coding, their understanding of the system becomes abstract. This leads to designs disconnected from reality, and they lose the trust of their team, who see them as out-of-touch architects without "skin in the game."
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AI is restructuring engineering teams. A future model involves a small group of senior engineers defining processes and reviewing code, while AI and junior engineers handle production. This raises a critical question: how will junior engineers develop into senior architects in this new paradigm?
Contrary to conventional wisdom, a distinguished engineer advises senior engineers to delegate the most challenging, interesting work. They should instead take on necessary but unglamorous tasks, which builds immense credit and allows junior engineers to grow faster on high-impact problems.
AI agents function like junior engineers, capable of generating code that introduces bugs, security flaws, or maintenance debt. This increases the demand for senior engineers who can provide architectural oversight, review code, and prevent system degradation, making their expertise more critical than ever.
The process of struggling with and solving hard problems is what builds engineering skill. Constantly available AI assistants act like a "slot machine for answers," removing this productive struggle. This encourages "vibe coding" and may prevent engineers from developing deep problem-solving expertise.
A key test for an architect's effectiveness is the "vacation test." If their absence for a week or two brings progress to a halt, they are a bottleneck and a single point of failure. An enabling architect builds systems and shares knowledge so the team can function autonomously.
A project's success equals its technical quality multiplied by team acceptance. Technologists often fail by engineering perfect solutions that nobody buys into or owns. An 80%-correct solution fiercely defended by the team will always outperform a "perfect" one that is ignored.
A critical cultural lesson from Facebook is that all engineering leaders must remain hands-on. Seeing a VP fix bugs in bootcamp demonstrates that staying technical is essential for making credible, detail-driven strategic decisions and avoiding ivory-tower management.
While intended to improve efficiency, the rise of Agile ceremonies and specialized roles like Product Managers has created layers of abstraction. This often "hides" engineers from direct customer interaction, reducing their understanding of the "why" behind their work.
A new risk for engineering leaders is becoming a 'vibe coding boss': using AI to set direction but misjudging its output as 95% complete when it's only 5%. This burdens the team with cleaning up a 'big mess of slop' rather than accelerating development.
Joachim Rekt believes writing code is a non-negotiable daily practice for anyone with "engineer" in their title. This keeps skills sharp, ensures continuous growth, and is the most fundamental way to contribute, contrary to the common advice for senior engineers to delegate more.