If you have significant previous coding experience - even if it’s a few years stale - you can drive these things really effectively. Especially if you have management experience, quite a lot of which transfers to “managing” coding agents - communicate clearly, set achievable goals, provide all relevant context.
Based on my own experience and the industry news, it’s not a great time to look for engineering management work. But, based on a sample size of one, it’s a good time for engineering leaders/managers to ride the EM/IC pendulum back to IC work, with a leadership twist.
I’ve been calling this “engineering leadership, the good parts”. More of the activities that produce software, for people, amongst teams, less of the activities that allow software teams to exist within larger organizations and business hierarchies. Pairing those skills with teams of people and coding agent collaborators is pretty potent these days.
Pro-tip: if you’re an IC who is really enjoying this agent stuff, you could be a future engineering leader!