Let me be blunt here; if you’re an Engineering Manager or lead a team of engineers and you’re not getting serious about agentic coding, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Hard.
Today with agents it’s never been easier and faster to get functional code.
Writing all of that code by hand, would be impossible for me.
I am just not as proficient anymore with all the up-to-date APIs and frameworks, LLMs are just quicker.
I would even argue the pace at which agents are able to produce functioning code is already at super human level.
So while I might not be able to code like I once could, the core concepts and debugging skills you need?
Still the same and apply today.
You need your engineering skills to steer the agents in a direction so the outcome is actually functional software.
And that’s what makes this new era of agentic coding so interesting, the playing field is leveling again.
You don’t need to be the engineer anymore that mastered their IDE and framework/language of choice. Agents already reached levels of expertise that with right guidance, puts someone with a solid software engineering background at almost an equal level again.
Agentic coding requires a new set of skills to come to the outcomes you want.
Engineering always was about solving problems, writing the code itself usually is the easy part. With the current trend, the code becomes more and more irrelevant, at least for the majority of problems we need to solve.
It’s been wild to watch. In just one year, AI went from “smarter autocomplete” to “holy shit, I don’t actually need to write code by hand anymore.” Even some of the initial skeptics are coming around.
So since it changes what it means to be an effective SE, it also means it changes what it means to be an effective EM.
Here’s the thing about being a manager; your whole job is making your people successful. When they win, the company wins, and yeah, you win too. But you can’t do that effectively if you don’t actually understand what’s going on.
I’m not saying you should be writing all the code yourself. That’s not the point. But if you can’t support your team with real answers and guidance when they need it? Someone who can will replace you.
Don’t become that boss who has no clue what’s actually happening.
I know a lot of people are saying “we don’t need managers anymore” with all this AI stuff. But I heavily disagree.
What the world doesn’t need more of is: clueless managers.
The reality is, when working in a team, someone needs to be accountable for success/failure. If you are responsible for business outcomes, you are also responsible for managing your people satisfaction and helping them earn their paycheck.
That’s why I think we need more great managers than ever before. Building software has never been this “easy”, which means we’re about to have a whole lot more people doing it. And someone needs to be there to support them along their journey.
So yeah, hone your skills. The playing field just got interesting again.