According to Business Insider, former Uber distinguished engineer Joakim Recht spent nearly nine years climbing from senior software engineer to distinguished engineer and now argues all engineers should write code regularly regardless of rank. Recht stated on “The Peterman Pod” that if your title includes “engineer,” you should be coding, calling this philosophy applicable to “any level.” He specifically warned that senior engineers risk losing touch with systems as they evolve, making future design difficult. Tech leaders from Amazon, Klarna, and Cloudflare follow similar approaches, with Klarna’s CEO even vibe-coding prototypes and Google cofounder Sergey Brin returning to office coding amid the AI race. Recht emphasized that regular coding maintains connection with systems and prevents losing hard-won knowledge about building reliable software at scale.
The engineering leadership crisis
Here’s the thing about climbing the engineering ladder: it often means writing less code. And that’s exactly the problem Recht is pointing to. As engineers become managers, architects, or distinguished engineers, their contributions shift toward planning, designing, and leading rather than hands-on coding. But is that really progress?
Recht’s argument hits at a fundamental tension in tech career growth. We reward great coders by promoting them away from coding. Then we wonder why technical leadership sometimes feels disconnected from reality. The system evolves, tools change, and suddenly the people making big architectural decisions haven’t written production code in years.
AI actually makes this worse
Now here’s where it gets really interesting. With AI coding tools becoming more capable, you’d think this would be the perfect time for senior engineers to get back into coding. But Recht argues the opposite – that AI makes it even more critical for experienced engineers to stay hands-on.
Otherwise, as he puts it, we risk losing “all the learnings from building reliable software at scale” and replacing them with “cool but useless prototypes.” Basically, junior engineers with AI tools can create impressive-looking code quickly, but without the hard-won wisdom about what actually works at scale. Senior engineers who’ve been through production fires understand the subtle differences between code that looks good and code that actually runs reliably.
Even CEOs are getting in on this
Look at Klarna’s CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski vibe-coding prototypes to save his tech team time. Or Google’s Sergey Brin returning to the office to try out AI coding tools. These aren’t engineers – they’re leaders who recognize that staying close to the technology makes them better at their jobs.
Cloudflare’s Matthew Prince put it perfectly: he doesn’t code much anymore, but he’s a “better CEO” because he understands how his company builds software. That understanding doesn’t come from reading reports – it comes from having been in the trenches.
What this means for engineering culture
So how do we actually implement this? Recht suggests coding “every day” for engineers at any level. But let’s be realistic – a distinguished engineer isn’t going to be closing 50 pull requests per week. The key is staying engaged with the codebase, understanding current challenges, and maintaining that connection to the reality of building software.
This philosophy extends beyond just engineering roles too. As Andrew Ng noted, “People that code, be it CEOs and marketers, recruiters, not just software engineers, will really get more done than ones that don’t.” Whether you’re evaluating industrial computing solutions or building consumer apps, that hands-on understanding changes how you approach problems.
The bottom line? If you call yourself an engineer, you probably should be engineering. Otherwise, what are we even doing here?
