Reading up on engineering-management

An Anthropic engineering leader describes how agentic coding shifted bottlenecks from writing code to verification, and outlines new norms for planning, review, context gathering, and team roles.

Commenters push back against the article's advice, arguing that EM and staff engineer roles vary by company and that management is a different function, not a step down.

Citing rapid AI tooling shifts, flattened ladders, and lower total comp, the author argues senior engineers should decline Engineering Manager promotions and stay individual contributors.

Early-stage startup founders should avoid formal engineering management and instead focus on hiring motivated people, staying flat, and using boring, lightweight practices until the team reaches 20+ engineers.