Technical leaders should have the largest AI exhaust
The article argues that technical leaders must remain hands-on with AI tools rather than delegating coding tasks entirely. It suggests that the emergence of AI agents has fundamentally changed software production, requiring leaders to understand new workflows to maintain effective oversight.
Why it matters
It challenges traditional management philosophies by suggesting that AI necessitates a return to technical involvement for senior engineering leaders.
Measuring engineers by their AI exhaust (token burn and lines of code) is a bad idea. Code generated and tokens spent are not the same thing as impact. A staff engineer can spend most of their time on non-coding activities (polishing a vision document, reviewing complex pull requests, influencing other teams, mentoring others) and still have more impact than an engineer who authored twice as many PRs.
In High Output Management , Andy Grove described this as leverage. The output of a leader extends beyond the work they produce directly into what they enable across the organization. Grove calls training one of the highest-leverage activities a leader can perform.
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