The Mandate: I’ve moved my team to a mandatory AI-first workflow to stay competitive.
The Fear: I’m worried about "hollowing out" junior talent and losing our fundamental "why."
The Solution: Use AI for the "bricks" (efficiency), but humans must still build the "house" (strategy).
I recently made a big call for my engineering team: Using AI is no longer optional. I’m pushing my developers to use AI bots for writing and testing code every single day. The tech world is moving way too fast to ignore these tools, and if we don't keep up, we’ll get left behind.
But I’ll be honest with you—it also makes me a bit uneasy. Here is why.
Falling into "The Dead Loop"
The biggest trap I see is what I call the "Dead Loop." We’ve all been there:
The AI gives you a piece of code that doesn't work.
You tell the AI it’s wrong.
The AI "apologies" and gives you the exact same broken code, just with different variable names.
If you aren't careful, you can waste two hours going in circles with a bot when you could have just fixed the logic yourself in five minutes. We can’t let the tools replace our own common sense.
Losing the "Big Picture"
AI is amazing at writing a small function, but it’s pretty bad at understanding how a whole app fits together. If we just copy-paste whatever the bot spits out, our code starts to look like a messy puzzle where the pieces don't quite fit. It might work today, but it’s going to be a nightmare to fix or change next year.
My 3 Simple Rules
To keep us sharp, I’ve given my team three "ground rules" for using AI:
Treat it like an Intern: Think of the AI as a very fast, very eager junior intern. You’d never just trust an intern’s work 100% without checking it, right? You have to read every line it writes.
Let it Type, Don’t Let it Think: Use AI for the boring "grunt work"—things like repetitive boilerplate or basic tests. But the big decisions—the "how and why" of our app—that has to come from your brain, not the bot's.
Know when to say "No": If you’ve spent more than 10 minutes arguing with a bot, turn it off. Sometimes, the "old school" way of just typing it out yourself is still the fastest way to get it done right.
The Bottom Line
We are in a new era of building software. I want my team to have the best tools, but I don't want them to lose their edge as real engineers. Use the bots, stay in control, and don't let the AI do your thinking for you. What do you think?
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