You're the Principal Engineer of an Agent Squad. Not a Manager.
*"Everyone's a manager now"* is a view I regularly come across as more and more of us start coordinating fleets of AI agents. It's inaccurate on several counts, but the part that worries me most is what it assumes about motivation: that being told you're a manager is universally a good thing. Most engineers actively choose not to go into (people) management, and hearing that the agentic future makes them one anyway is demotivating to many, not exciting. Coordinating agents looks far more like staff+ engineering than people leadership, and getting that framing right is the difference between energising your best engineers and subtly pushing them away.
October 22 — Conference Day
David Curlewis is a Senior Engineering Manager at Canva, where he leads teams in the AI Platform group. He has spent 25+ years in product & platform engineering, 15 years in engineering leadership, with earlier roles at Flux, GitLab, Sharesies, Timely, and Trade Me.
He writes about AI-assisted engineering, leadership, and the rollercoaster of working in tech at curlewis.co.nz. He is based in Wellington, and is happiest with a problem to untangle, whether that's organisational architecture, a data workflow, or a motorbike in the garage.