First, Principals

Last week I wrote that the pure manager was structurally obsolete. This week ClickUp cut 22% and their CEO explained exactly why.

"AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows them down."

Two CEOs in two weeks came to the same conclusion. The pattern's real.

But both posts focus on what's dying. The better question is what replaces it.

Engineering already has the answer: the principal engineer. Deep domain expertise, no direct reports, influences through judgement not authority. They were always effectively managing without the people-overhead apparatus: holding context, making tradeoffs, directing execution. Engineering got there first because execution got cheap there first.

AI makes execution cheap everywhere. A marketing leader who truly knows their customers can now direct campaigns directly. A CFO who understands the business model runs their own analysis. The coordinator and analyst layers thin. Same pattern, every function.

The person with the deepest knowledge closes the loop themselves, without a human relay between intent and output.

Call it the principal. Not the principal engineer specifically - that's just where the model appeared first. A principal owns domain context rather than headcount, directs execution rather than managing people, and leads through depth rather than authority.

Every function will have principals and non-principals. That distinction will matter more than any traditional seniority ladder.

The question isn't whether you're a manager or an IC. It's whether you're a principal.