CTOs Are Lining Up to Be Engineers at Anthropic — What Does That Tell Us?

A Headline That Made Me Stop and Think

I came across a piece of news today: a growing number of CTOs and VP-level executives at tech companies are leaving their management roles to join Anthropic as regular engineers.

Not as executives — as ICs (Individual Contributors). Voluntarily stepping down from leading hundreds of people to writing code.

My first reaction: have they lost their minds?

The salary, the equity, the influence of a CTO — you just walk away from all that? To start writing code at a new company?

But then I thought about it. These people didn’t become CTOs by being stupid. They’re not acting on impulse. They’re placing a bet.

What Do They See?

The answer might be simple: they believe AGI is really coming soon.

As a CTO, you manage people, processes, and architecture. But if AGI actually arrives, the value of all those things gets redefined. What matters most won’t be experience managing a 500-person team — it’ll be deep understanding of the most powerful models.

These people aren’t going to Anthropic to “write code.” They’re going to get as close to the most powerful models as possible.

Think about it: if you were a general and someone told you nuclear weapons were about to be invented — would you keep commanding cavalry charges, or would you rush to the Manhattan Project lab?

The answer is obvious.

The closer you are to the core, the deeper your understanding. The deeper your understanding, the more influence you have in the new era. These former CTOs aren’t giving up power — they’re positioning themselves early for the next form of power.

What Does This Mean for Regular Programmers?

Honestly, when I saw this news, my first feeling wasn’t excitement — it was urgency.

If even CTOs feel they need to “get back to the table,” what about the rest of us?

This reminds me of 19th-century carriage drivers.

When cars first appeared, how did most carriage drivers react? They laughed. That smoke-belching iron box that was slower than a horse and broke down every other day — what was there to fear?

But history tells us: it wasn’t that carriage drivers lost their jobs the moment cars appeared. It was that when cars crossed the tipping point of being “good enough,” the transition happened faster than anyone could react.

AI might be in its “slower than a horse” phase right now — it makes mistakes, writes bugs, and sometimes isn’t as fast as hand-coding. But every few months, it gets noticeably better.

And those CTOs have clearly concluded: the tipping point isn’t far away.

Embracing, Not Surrendering

Some might feel that “embracing AI” is a form of surrender — admitting you’re not as good as a machine.

Quite the opposite.

The carriage drivers who were first to learn to drive cars? Many of them became taxi drivers and logistics company owners. They weren’t replaced because their core skills — understanding routes, reading passenger needs — were still valuable with the new tool. The ones who got replaced were those who refused to touch a steering wheel.

It’s the same for programmers. Your understanding of the business, your judgment about systems, your ability to break down requirements — none of that disappears just because AI can write code. But if you refuse to learn how to work with AI, your value will be quickly surpassed by those who do.

Embracing AI isn’t admitting you’re not good enough — it’s making yourself stronger.

Start Now

You don’t need to wait until AGI actually arrives. You can start right now:

• Code with AI: Not letting it replace you, but learning to collaborate with it. You provide the judgment, it provides the speed.
• Learn with AI: Have a concept you don’t understand? Just ask. AI is the most patient teacher in history.
• Build products with AI: One person plus AI can now build what used to require an entire team.

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. This blog, the small products I’ve built — a huge amount of the code was written together with AI. Not because I’m lazy, but because it’s genuinely faster and better.

Final Thoughts

Those CTOs are voting with their feet, sending us a signal: the closer you are to AI, the more valuable you’ll be in the future.

This isn’t motivational fluff. This is a group of the smartest, most well-informed people betting their careers on it.

The good news for the rest of us? You don’t need to quit your job and run to Anthropic. You just need to start using AI in your daily work, start understanding it, start collaborating with it.

A carriage driver doesn’t need to become an automotive engineer — but they do need to learn how to drive.

Now is the time to learn.