Being a great engineering manager is the most valuable skill in the agent age

The fundamentals of managing AI agents aren't that different from what a very organized person did pre-AI — pin your most important things, stay on top of decisions, don't let your team get blocked. The twist is that your team is now infinitely scalable and moves very fast. The most valuable thing you can teach yourself right now is how to be a very good engineering manager. That means: work in the cloud, prioritize ruthlessly, learn to make high-stakes decisions quickly, and get technical. Anyone telling you that engineering is going away or that being technical matters less is simply not doing the work. Your job is to manage as many agents as you possibly can, and the people who understand how things are actually built will do that far better than those who don't — just like a real carpenter would be a much better manager of robot carpenters because they know where to make the cut and where to put the nail.