Are You ‘Agentic’ Enough for the AI Era?
Summary
Silicon Valley has long prized “high-agency” people — those who take initiative and execute without being told. As AI coding agents increasingly handle repetitive and grunt work, the article argues the most valuable human skill is now deciding what those agents should do: scoping problems, designing instructions, chaining tasks, and verifying outputs. It examines how this shift changes hiring, workplace culture and the distribution of advantages and risks across workers and organisations.
Key Points
- AI coding agents are taking over routine and repetitive tasks, elevating the value of human direction-setting and judgement.
- Being “agentic” means decomposing goals, writing effective prompts/instructions, orchestrating multi-step workflows, and supervising results.
- Demand will rise for orchestration, verification and meta‑skills rather than pure execution or manual coding.
- There is a risk this emphasis will entrench inequality if access to agentic skill development and tooling is uneven.
- Organisations must adapt hiring, training and evaluation to reward judgement, coordination and the ability to work with agentic tools.
Why should I read this?
Look — if you’re in tech, hiring, or plotting your next career move, this one tells you what actually matters now. It isn’t about who types fastest; it’s about who tells the bots what to do and checks they did it right. We read it so you don’t have to; skim this and then read the original if you’re planning to adapt.
Context and relevance
The piece sits squarely in current trends around generative and agentic AI: tools that automate workflows and increasingly make autonomous decisions. Its lessons matter for managers, product leads, educators and employees because they highlight where to invest time and training — in judgement, coordination and agent orchestration — rather than only technical execution.
Author style
Punchy — Maxwell Zeff frames the debate sharply. If you care about workforce strategy or your own career resilience, the article’s examples and implications deserve a full read: it’s a useful early map of how roles are being reshaped by agentic systems.
Source
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-agentic-individuals-future-of-work/