Thanks for the concrete examples. Engineering Managers are playing a bigger role than they maybe realize. When teams become the successful unit (not only individuals) from deploying AI, the benefits are huge.
I find myself agreeing with so much of your management style and focus, Anton. The human aspects of your job were a pleasure to read about and you seem like a very level-headed and competent leader who understands the importance of treating people well. My only contention appears when you start to talk about AI. "If people focus only on their day-to-day work, they won’t explore, and they’ll become less relevant over time." Respectfully, I see things from the opposite angle: employees are becoming too distracted by AI magic, which turns into a time sink or a dead end, and they end up neglecting the critical work. It's not their fault: they're often mandated to use AI and are struggling to find reasons to use it: a solution looking for a problem. I think we as managers can help them stay focused or be part of the problem. Unfortunately I think many EMs are either too enamored with the allure of AI that they can't really see past their own bias, or they are reporting to a chain of command that is focused on eliciting AI compliance with no room for dissent or debate. AI is treated as essential and inevitable, despite all evidence to the contrary. We are almost sleepwalking into this AI narrative that wasn't written by us. In reality, I don't think a single developer is going to be "left behind" if they don't dive into AI. Especially now that the token costs are surging upwards and many enterprises are going to be priced out soon as AI subsidies come to an end. Anyway, like I said, you seem to have your heart in the right place, so I wish you luck.
Yeah, I think we are definitely not in agreement here :)
There is for sure hype from the top, and unrealistic expectations. Still, I see firsthand how huge is the benefit for those who truly adopt it. I’ve seen first hand a many examples, including a huge an ambitious project, in a very complex database and production area, get accomplished in 20% of the time we initially estimated, with very minimal bugs.
From what I’ve seen, those
who feel it’s a dead sink are just not using it properly - expecting it to be magic, instead of focusing on how to get the max out of it.
That's okay. I realize how hard it is to see through the illusion right now. But watch out for the reality shock that enterprises are going to witness probably less than a year from now. Like I said, costs are not coming down, and there will be more catastrophes like the AWS outages and other vibe-coded disasters. Engineers who can still solve complex problems without leaning on probabilistic short cuts are going to be in very high demand at some point. Lest you see me as an antagonist I want to reiterate that the people management priorities and techniques you outlined in the first half of your article were spot on and I commend you for that.
Thanks for the concrete examples. Engineering Managers are playing a bigger role than they maybe realize. When teams become the successful unit (not only individuals) from deploying AI, the benefits are huge.
I find myself agreeing with so much of your management style and focus, Anton. The human aspects of your job were a pleasure to read about and you seem like a very level-headed and competent leader who understands the importance of treating people well. My only contention appears when you start to talk about AI. "If people focus only on their day-to-day work, they won’t explore, and they’ll become less relevant over time." Respectfully, I see things from the opposite angle: employees are becoming too distracted by AI magic, which turns into a time sink or a dead end, and they end up neglecting the critical work. It's not their fault: they're often mandated to use AI and are struggling to find reasons to use it: a solution looking for a problem. I think we as managers can help them stay focused or be part of the problem. Unfortunately I think many EMs are either too enamored with the allure of AI that they can't really see past their own bias, or they are reporting to a chain of command that is focused on eliciting AI compliance with no room for dissent or debate. AI is treated as essential and inevitable, despite all evidence to the contrary. We are almost sleepwalking into this AI narrative that wasn't written by us. In reality, I don't think a single developer is going to be "left behind" if they don't dive into AI. Especially now that the token costs are surging upwards and many enterprises are going to be priced out soon as AI subsidies come to an end. Anyway, like I said, you seem to have your heart in the right place, so I wish you luck.
Yeah, I think we are definitely not in agreement here :)
There is for sure hype from the top, and unrealistic expectations. Still, I see firsthand how huge is the benefit for those who truly adopt it. I’ve seen first hand a many examples, including a huge an ambitious project, in a very complex database and production area, get accomplished in 20% of the time we initially estimated, with very minimal bugs.
From what I’ve seen, those
who feel it’s a dead sink are just not using it properly - expecting it to be magic, instead of focusing on how to get the max out of it.
That's okay. I realize how hard it is to see through the illusion right now. But watch out for the reality shock that enterprises are going to witness probably less than a year from now. Like I said, costs are not coming down, and there will be more catastrophes like the AWS outages and other vibe-coded disasters. Engineers who can still solve complex problems without leaning on probabilistic short cuts are going to be in very high demand at some point. Lest you see me as an antagonist I want to reiterate that the people management priorities and techniques you outlined in the first half of your article were spot on and I commend you for that.