Leaving Engineering
While I never thought the day would come, I've taken a software engineering adjacent role for the first time since graduating college. Ever since I got my BS in CS, I've been focused on building great products and then building the amazing teams that build those products. And I never thought I would do anything else because I loved it from the moment I started my career.
At the e-commerce company, I reported up through an engineering director that I really respected. For the longest time, my answer to "what are your career goals?" was "be Bob". I wanted to be an engineering director that supported a few teams focused on one product area. At various points in my career I've found myself on the cusp of this, but I was always running multiple teams as an engineering manager in a weird place between line management and a more strategic role. The leap to only running a team of managers never happened. And with the introduction of agentic coding tools, I'm not sure what the future of a role like that even is anymore.
With agentic programming, you can clear a backlog out in record time. Helping ensure that engineers are operating at their most effective was one of my favorite parts of the job. Everywhere I've worked I've been "the jira guy". But now the "in progress" column of the kanban board is moving faster than ever before, and we as an industry need to figure out how to improve the process on either side of it, from ideation to delivery.
For better or worse, I've lost interest in improving the engineering delivery process post build. The problem has shifted away from "how do I make engineers more productive" to "how do I make the engineers more effective robot babysitters". I'm sure there are some very smart people working on that problem, and it is probably one that I will come back to in the future. But for now, I've decided to shift my focus to the left of the board.
Instead of worrying about the delivery of software, I want to focus on the shaping of that software and the overall strategy of it. This isn't going to be product management, or even portfolio management of a product area. Instead, I'll be focused on ensuring that my company is making the right AI bets for this new era. Sometimes that will mean building software, sometimes buying software, and other times just repurposing things we already have.
I'm very excited to dive in. It's a bittersweet moment saying goodbye to engineering, but I'm just moving across the room. I'm only a Teams call away.