Staff archetypes in the age of agentic engineering

The dominant AI narratives in engineering right now are depressingly predictable: seniors are finally 10x, juniors have no future, and companies keep cutting headcount. What gets less attention is how agentic engineering is changing the landscape for senior-plus engineers — tipping the scale toward some shapes of work and away from others, including ones the industry still needs.

AI can be an expensive footgun. What’s happening is interesting at least, and might be a bad omen.

I’ve been using Will Larson’s staff archetypes for years — Tech Lead, Architect, Solver, and Right Hand. It’s a gross generalization, but the categories are useful and have always felt natural. Here’s how they look under current incentives.

Tech Leads are getting squeezed

Coordination, vision, and unblocking — the parts that used to define their impact — are being eaten by prompts and agents. Some Tech Leads are adapting. Some are watching their leverage shrink. Focus drifts toward shipping speed and away from the quality and standards work that was their wheelhouse.

Architects are getting sidelined

Hard. Companies believe they can ship fast without deep architectural thinking, so Solvers and small teams cut Architects out of the loop. Some of that is on Architects too: adapting long-term coherence to vibe-coding velocity is genuinely hard. Either way, they’re undervalued right now, and it’s dangerous.

Solvers are thriving

Management loves people who can take ambiguous problems, lean on agents, and ship aggressively. They’re also the ones cleaning up the 2am messes when the magic breaks. The growing costs for them are overload and a fuzzy long-term future inside the company. Constant fire-fighting and project-hopping make it harder to build real domain expertise.

Right Hands remain rare

Especially in the startup scene I know. My guess is they’ll be the ones driving the technical side of AI transformations alongside management — embedding practices and tools across the org while trying to keep systems and culture from breaking. Hard to see that working without first spending real time as Solvers, then (hopefully) switching back.

The incentive trap

We’re currently optimizing engineering orgs around Solvers too heavily. The other three archetypes are still needed, but relatively starved. Today’s incentives also shape the Staff-engineer mix five to ten years out — and I see huge gravitation toward Solvers.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Still annoying to watch.

Adapted from a LinkedIn post, June 2026.