GoKawiilSunil Sadasivan reflects on Sunil Pai's 'senior engineer death spiral' essay
Engineering leader Sunil Sadasivan writes about re-reading Sunil Pai's essay on senior engineers feeling stuck as their fields evolve. Sadasivan argues that first principles thinking—asking why something is being built and how it helps users—is what separates the best engineers he's managed, regardless of their background. He connects this habit to Pai's advice about prioritizing momentum over fixed outcomes, especially as software development shifts toward agentic AI tools.