This week I attended a really fascinating conversation on creativity with guest Amanda Shulman, head chef and owner of the Michelin Star awarded “Her Club” restaurant. While the whole conversation was fascinating, one part of the chat was especially intriguing where she talked about her relationship with her Chef de Cuisine (a title I had never heard before).
Amanda’s entire career is based on creativity in the kitchen, and she brings that every night. Her Chef de Cuisine’s role is to balance that with the practical needs of the evening. That blend of creative exploration and pragmatic delivery felt like such a powerful combination.
Her comments “paired well” with something I read this week: an idea that all engineering teams should be composed of 2 parts: pirates and an architects
A new model for engineering team structure in 2026: 2 people only
one pirate and one architect
the pirate’s job is to move as fast as possible to develop valuable, shipped product features by vibe coding.
the architect’s job is to turn the product surface discovered by the pirate into a reliable, structured machine—also by vibe coding, but at a slower, more well-reasoned pace.
every product needs a pirate but most product’s only need an architect once they some form of PMF, and in that case they usually don’t need one full-time. architects can work across many codebases and solve interesting technical challenges. pirates go hard on a product that they own end-to-end.
Two people is probably too small for most teams at any real scale. But the idea of pirate organizations has stuck with me.
A big part of my career has been working in pirate organizations. No formal product leads, no dedicated designers, no QA — but a real sense of ownership and the freedom to move fast. Some of the most rewarding work I’ve done came out of those environments. You make more calls than you’re comfortable with, you wear a lot of hats, and occasionally you build something you’re genuinely proud of.
Large organizations have a bias towards “architect orgS”. That’s not inherently bad – structure exists for good reasons, especially at scale. But I think it’s worth asking occasionally: do we actually have any pirate orgs? Do we have space for teams that operate a little more like a creative kitchen than a factory floor?
The tools available now make this more interesting than ever. A small, empowered team with modern AI coding tools and real autonomy could do things that would’ve taken 10x the headcount just a few years ago. The pirate model scales differently now.
The best organizations probably need both. The hard part is knowing when to hand the keys to the pirates – and trusting that they won’t sink the ship
🏴☠️
Code Zen 