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Episode Summary
A client asked Dave and Dan a deceptively simple question: "What should we call the job title for the person who leads our AI engineering transformation?" The answer surprised them — it's not a new role. It's a Principal Engineer. In this episode, they break down exactly what that means, why the best candidate hasn't written a line of code in the last six months, and how to interview for it.
Key Topics
- Why there's no new job title — agentic engineering isn't a sliver of your org, it's the whole thing. The role is Principal or Distinguished Engineer, full stop.
- The counterintuitive hiring criterion — you want someone who's written code for 10–20 years but hasn't written a line in the last six months. They've already built the trust with AI systems to let go.
- DHH and Linus flipped — both publicly opposed AI-generated code; now it's in Rails and the Linux kernel. The holdouts have adapted. So should you.
- Why rewrites almost always fail — Dave and Dan's take on migrations: the first 80% is easy, the last 20% kills the project, and you end up with something just as messy as what you started with.
- The interview process has changed — don't ask them to write code. Ask them to show you the system they built to build code. "If you built it by coding, you're not a good candidate."
- Management is in the way — autonomy and agency are what make senior engineers succeed. Micromanagement is the fastest way to lose the person you just hired.
Notable Quotes
- "If you built it by coding, you're not a good candidate."
- "Your job nowadays is to not just build that system, but to constantly improve that system. You're building, maintaining, and improving a system that's building stuff for you — that is your job."
- "It's game over guys. You need to adapt if you haven't already."
About The Velocity Lab
Dave O'Dell and Dan McAulay work inside engineering organizations every day helping them ship faster with AI. No hype, no BS — just what's working in the field.
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