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Staff and Principal Leverage With AI

5 min read
Tech LeadCto

Tech Lead

Your leverage comes from judgment, not raw output. AI magnifies both — choose wisely.

Staff and Principal Leverage With AI

TL;DR

  • Senior ICs don't compete with AI on code volume. They compete on scope, ambiguity, and judgment.
  • AI lets you prototype faster, explore more options, and unblock others at scale. Use it that way.
  • The risk: getting pulled into implementation when your unique value is strategy, design, and influence.

Staff and Principal engineers are supposed to have disproportionate impact. Not by writing more code — by solving harder problems, setting direction, and unblocking teams. AI threatens to flatten that. If juniors can now ship with AI, what's the senior's edge? Answer: the stuff AI can't do. And AI can amplify the stuff you can do.

Where AI Amplifies Senior Impact

1. Faster prototyping and exploration

  • "What if we tried event sourcing?" Instead of a week of coding, you can have a working spike in an afternoon.
  • Use AI to explore alternatives. You still decide which one to pursue. You still know why.

2. RFCs, ADRs, and design docs

  • AI can draft structure. You inject context, constraints, and trade-offs. Your 2-hour doc becomes 30 minutes.
  • Don't let AI write the whole thing. Use it for scaffolding and first drafts.

3. Unblocking at scale

  • "Here's how to approach this." You used to say it in 1:1s. Now you can encode patterns in prompts, docs, and examples.
  • AI distributes your knowledge. You still own the quality of that knowledge.

4. Code review at higher altitude

  • You can review more PRs if AI helps with the mechanical checks. Focus your energy on architecture, edge cases, and "does this fit our system?"
  • Delegate the trivial. Own the consequential.

Where You Must Stay Human

Ambiguity and scope

  • "What should we even build?" AI can't answer that. You can. That's your job.

Cross-team and org politics

  • Technical decisions often have political implications. AI doesn't understand your VP's pet project or the legacy team's sensitivities.
  • You navigate that. AI can't.

Judgment under uncertainty

  • "Ship it or wait?" "Refactor now or later?" "Buy or build?" These are judgment calls. AI can provide options; you decide.

Mentorship and apprenticeship

  • Staff and Principal engineers grow the next generation. AI doesn't mentor. You do.

The Trap: Implementation Creep

AI makes implementation easier. That can pull senior ICs back into coding when they should be leading. Resist.

  • Delegate implementation, own design. You sketch; others (and AI) implement. You review.
  • Protect focus time. Meetings expand to fill the calendar. AI-augmented juniors need less of your time for hand-holding — use that for strategy.
  • Measure impact differently. "Lines of code" or "PRs merged" are wrong metrics for you. Measure: initiatives led, teams unblocked, decisions improved.

Manual process. Repetitive tasks. Limited scale.

Click "With AI" to see the difference →

Quick Check

What remains human when AI automates more of this role?

Do This Next

  1. Audit your last week — How much time on implementation vs. strategy, design, mentorship? If implementation is creeping up, delegate more.
  2. Create one reusable asset — Prompt, template, or doc that encodes your judgment. Share it. See if it multiplies.
  3. Say no to one implementation task — Redirect it to someone (human + AI) who can own it. Your job is the harder problem.