> I think you over estimate how valuable really good Principal level talent is when you have AIs that can take over for entire teams.

I think you mean underestimate.

A good principal engineer (and they almost always are good) is someone who can understand both business requirements as well as the architectural foundations that underlay the product itself.

Principal (and Principal track Staff, Senior, and early-career) SWEs aren't going anywhere. In fact in an LLM-driven world, their domain experience is much more critical.