My mindset last year: I am now a mentor to a junior developer

My mindset this year: I am an engineering manager to a team of developers

If the pace of AI improvement continues, my mindset next year will need to be: I am CEO and CTO.

I never enjoyed the IC -> EM transition in the workplace because of all the tedious political issues, people management issues and repetitive admin. I actually went back to being an IC because of this.

However, with a team of AI agents, there's less BS, and less holding me back. So I'm seeing the positives - I can achieve vastly more, and I can set the engineering standards, improve quality (by training and tuning the AI) and get plenty of satisfaction from "The Builder" role, as defined in the article.

Likewise I'm sure I would hate the CEO/CTO role in real life. However, I am adapting my mindset to the 2030s reality, and imagining being a CEO/CTO to an infinitely scalable team of Agentic EMs who can deliver the work of hundreds of real people, in any direction I choose.

How much space is there in the marketplace if all HN readers become CEOs and try to launch their own products and services? Who knows... but I do know that this is the option available to me, and it's probably wise to get ahead of it.