I’ve re-read Sunil Pai’s “the senior engineer death spiral” several times this week. It’s resonating with me because almost every senior engineer has felt some version of being stuck. Pai talks about focusing on momentum instead of outcomes. When I’m stuck, I break the work down to the smallest thing I can accomplish.

After sitting with his post, I kept coming back to first principles thinking. The best engineers I’ve worked with shared a habit of thinking from first principles. They’d ask why we were building something and what it would do for people using it. That understanding helped them keep things simple.

Transitioning to the agentic era, the people who seem to be vibing with it are usually the ones who already think this way. The engineers I see keeping up with what’s possible are willing to put what they know in a box for a while as they work with agents. They’ll try something before assuming an old constraint still applies.

Approaching it from first principles means starting with what we’re trying to do and asking how AI could help. If you’re doing it right, working with agents lets that back-and-forth happen much faster. You get faster learning loops and more momentum, oriented around deep understanding.