Which engineering management rules break when the cost of code collapses

Engineering management after the cost of code collapsed

Karim Jedda, a director of engineering for over three years, argues that LLMs collapsed the cost of producing code, breaking the assumptions under roughly half of traditional management rules. Practices resting on code-writing cost—velocity tracking, consensus-driven architecture—need review. Practices resting on human coordination, trust, and correctness verification remain unchanged. He splits verification into mechanical checking, which is genuinely getting faster, and semantic checking, which isn't, because correctness still lives in human heads and institutional history. Teams that invest in machine-checkable specifications capture the full benefit; those that don't get generated code reviewed by the same machine that generated it. The junior pipeline remains unsolved.

Why it matters: A first-person management reflection from a practicing eng director. Splits the LLM impact into 'code got cheap' vs 'human coordination didn't change' — a clean framework with real judgment. Not a product launch or paper, but high signal density for anyone leading a technical ...