It was a typical Tuesday morning when I first decided to give AI a serious try in my workflow. As an engineering leader with years of experience under my belt, I was skeptical. After all, I’d built my career on my own skills and intuition. How could a machine learning model really improve on that? Little did I know, this decision would mark the beginning of a six-month journey that would completely transform my approach to work and productivity.

My first foray into AI assistance was for a task that had always been a thorn in my side: writing. As a non-native English speaker, I’d always struggled to polish my writing to a professional standard. It was time-consuming and often frustrating.

The results were nothing short of astonishing. What usually took me hours of meticulous editing was accomplished in minutes. The AI didn’t just correct grammar; it refined my phrasing, enhanced clarity, and even suggested more impactful ways to present my ideas. Suddenly, I was producing the same high-quality content with just 20% of my previous effort. It was as if I’d unlocked a hidden superpower.

Emboldened by this success, I began to explore other areas where AI could assist me. As the leader of our platform team, one of my recurring challenges was explaining our complex technical projects to non-technical stakeholders. Our work was crucial for the company’s infrastructure, but conveying its importance often felt like trying to explain quantum physics to a kindergartener.

That’s when I had an idea. If AI could help me write better, could it also help me communicate more effectively? I spent an evening crafting a detailed prompt for Claude, outlining the structure I wanted for our internal product announcements. The next day, I put it to the test.

The results exceeded my wildest expectations. The AI-generated announcement took our technical jargon and transformed it into a clear, engaging narrative that anyone in the company could understand. It highlighted the project’s benefits and its impact on our organization in a way that resonated with both the tech team and the marketing department.

Word spread quickly about these new, accessible updates. Soon, colleagues from all departments were stopping me in the hallway, eager to discuss our latest innovations. For the first time, I felt like the entire organization truly understood and appreciated the work we were doing behind the scenes.

As the weeks turned into months, I found more and more ways to incorporate AI into my workflow. It became my go-to tool for writing Terraform and CloudFormation code, quickly generating complex infrastructure-as-code templates that would have taken hours to write manually. When I needed to brush up on a technology I hadn’t used in a while, the AI was there with concise, accurate explanations and examples.

But the real game-changer came just last week, pushing me to share my experiences in this blog post. We had an old JavaScript library for JWT generation and validation that needed a major overhaul. It was a daunting task, especially since I hadn’t worked with some of the auxiliary frameworks.

At first, I made good progress, updating most of the core libraries without issue. But when it came to upgrading the build processes, linting tools, and deployment scripts, I hit a wall. In the past, this would have been the point where I’d either spend days researching or, more likely, shelve the project as too time-consuming.

Instead, I turned to my new AI assistant. I described the project, pasted in error messages, and asked for guidance. What followed was like a virtual pair programming session. The AI suggested potential fixes, explained unfamiliar concepts, and helped me debug issues in real-time. In less than a day, we had the library updated, secured, and ready for modern use.

This experience was a revelation. It wasn’t that the AI was replacing my skills as a developer. Rather, it was augmenting them, filling in gaps in my knowledge and allowing me to take on projects that would have been impractical before. It was like having a brilliant junior developer at my beck and call, one who could instantly recall any documentation I needed and never got tired or frustrated.

But as I shared my experiences with colleagues, I encountered some resistance. “Won’t this make us lazy?” some asked. “What if we become dependent on it?” others worried. Their concerns reminded me of a story my father often told.

You see, my father prided himself on knowing the streets of his city by heart. He could navigate from any point to another without a second thought, a skill honed over decades. When GPS systems first became popular, he scoffed. “That’ll make people lose their ability to navigate,” he’d say. “What happens when the technology fails?”

Fast forward to today, and nearly everyone has a GPS in their pocket. Far from making us helpless, it’s expanded our horizons, allowing us to confidently explore new places and find efficient routes in unfamiliar territories. My father, too, eventually came around, realizing that GPS wasn’t replacing his knowledge but enhancing his ability to navigate.

I see AI in much the same light. It’s not about replacing our skills or making us lazy. It’s about enhancing our capabilities, allowing us to go further and achieve more than we ever could alone. Just as we wouldn’t choose to navigate a new city without GPS, I believe future engineers will find it unthinkable to work without AI assistance.

As I reflect on my six-month journey with AI, I’m filled with excitement for the future. I’ve seen firsthand how this technology can dramatically increase our output, allow us to tackle a broader range of tasks with confidence, and free up our human creativity for the most challenging problems.

The AI revolution isn’t coming — it’s already here. And just like the GPS transformed navigation, AI is reshaping the landscape of productivity across industries. As engineering leaders, we have a choice: embrace this technology and harness its power, or risk falling behind.

My challenge to you is this: identify one area of your work where you struggle with efficiency. It could be writing, coding, explaining complex concepts, or anything else. Then, explore how AI can help you overcome that challenge. You might just find, as I did, that it opens up a world of new possibilities.

Remember, the goal isn’t to replace human ingenuity but to augment it. By integrating AI into our workflows, we can free ourselves to focus on what truly matters: innovation, strategic thinking, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in our field.

The future of engineering is AI-assisted. It’s not about losing our skills, but about enhancing them, about going further than we ever could before. The question isn’t whether AI will transform our industry — it’s already happening. The real question is: Are you ready to be at the forefront of this transformation?

Don’t get left behind reading the metaphorical map while others are using AI to chart new territories. Embrace the AI revolution. Trust me, the view from here is incredible, and the journey has only just begun.

And yes, I’ll let you in on a little secret: this blog post was generated with AI! Well, to be precise, it was a collaboration between AI and myself. The AI helped structure my thoughts, refine my language, and even suggested some analogies. But the experiences, insights, and enthusiasm? Those are 100% human-generated. Welcome to the future of writing — and working!