AI changes the tools,
you still Own the Craft
A free book for engineers and leaders on working with AI, drawn from years of using it in real engineering work.
Free · 12 chapters · Đọc bằng tiếng Việt
Contents
Mục lục tiếng Việt- About the Author1 min read
- Preface3 min read
- IntroductionThe AI Moment3 min read
- Chapter 1The Turning Point in AI2 min read
- Chapter 2Why this matters for Engineers and Teams3 min read
- Chapter 3Coding isn't the job3 min read
- Chapter 4AI as Your Junior Engineer3 min read
- Chapter 5Where AI helps (and where it doesn't)6 min read
- Chapter 6The New Engineering Workflow3 min read
- Chapter 7How much faster can we really go?3 min read
- Chapter 8Rethinking Team Structure in the AI Era4 min read
- Chapter 9Rethinking how we work with Product3 min read
- Chapter 10What AI needs from you (and your organization)4 min read
- Chapter 11Staying relevant as an Engineer in the AI Era4 min read
- ConclusionYou still own the craft2 min read
- Closing1 min read
Who this is for
I wrote this for engineers at any level who are trying to figure out what AI means for their work.
If you're an individual engineer
You're probably wondering which skills matter now and which ones might become less valuable. I've been there, unsure whether to worry about AI replacing what I do or to get excited about the possibilities.
If you're leading a team
You're dealing with questions about productivity, process changes, and how to help your team adapt. Everyone's asking about AI tools, but nobody really knows how to measure if they're actually helping.
If you're in a leadership role
You need to make decisions about tooling, team structure, and budget. But most of what you read about AI is either too technical or too abstract to be useful for planning.
I don't have all the answers, but I've spent years trying to figure this out in practice. These are my notes from that journey.
Questions I get asked
These come up pretty much every time I talk about AI and engineering.
I get this question a lot. Honestly, I don't think so, at least not anytime soon. AI is really good at writing the first version of code, but there's so much more to engineering than that. Someone still needs to figure out what to build, how it fits into the bigger system, and whether it actually solves the right problem. That's still on us.
Nope. This isn't about building AI models, it's about using AI tools that already exist. Think Cursor, GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude Code, that kind of thing. If you can use a text editor, you can use these tools. The tricky part is knowing when to trust them and when not to.
It helps, but I think it's overrated. Yes, knowing how to ask AI for what you want is useful. But the real skill is being able to look at what it gives you and know if it's any good. That takes experience and judgment, stuff you probably already have as an engineer.
Maybe. It depends on what you mean by productive. AI can definitely help you write code faster, but if you're spending that saved time fixing bugs because the AI code was flaky, are you really ahead? The goal isn't to go faster, it's to spend your time on the stuff that actually matters.
About me
VP of Engineering @ ShopBack
I've been building software for about 12 years, from developer to leading teams. When GitHub Copilot then ChatGPT came out, I started using AI in my daily work and taking notes on what actually helped and what was just hype. This book is those notes, cleaned up and organized.
More about me