This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why he uses AI to raise the quality of engineering work rather than its volume
2. How an agent infers the requirement behind a pull request so it can be checked against the original ticket
3. Why near-zero failure tolerance in parcel logistics decides where AI is allowed in the pipeline
4. How to measure AI initiatives when the gains resist precise numbers
5. How Bloq.it Lab lets sales, marketing and operations build with Claude Code inside company guardrails

Higino's details:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/higinosilva/
Bloq.it: https://www.bloq.it/

📬 Looking for practical frameworks and leadership insights? Subscribe to the Thriving In Engineering newsletter: https://thrivinginengineering.substack.com/subscribe

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why Artur describes himself as living between "reality and fiction," where what leadership hears about AI often does not match what he sees on the ground
2. How an architect using Claude Code fully absorbed a planned cloud engineer role before recruitment even finished
3. Why Artur is alarmed that AI could force companies to reorganize IT teams around business function instead of technology
4. Why leaders hide stress as a sign of weakness, and why only experienced leaders tend to open up about it
5. Why building a real production app through "vibe engineering" made the architecture and PRD matter more than the tech stack

Artur's details:
The Long Missing SoW: https://www.arturhenriques.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/artur-henriques

Related reading:
What If Stress Is a Choice (Thriving In Engineering): https://thrivinginengineering.substack.com/p/what-if-stress-is-a-choice
Project Jam #5: A Manager's Job Has (The Long Missing SoW): https://www.arturhenriques.com/p/project-jam-5-a-managers-job-has
The AI Efficiency Paradox (The Long Missing SoW): https://www.arturhenriques.com/p/the-ai-efficiency-paradox

📬 Looking for practical frameworks and leadership insights? Subscribe to the Thriving In Engineering newsletter: https://thrivinginengineering.substack.com/subscribe

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why she left a director-level engineering role to build a coaching practice for women in tech leadership
2. How authenticity, not natural charisma, got her hired into a demanding engineering leadership role over more polished-seeming candidates
3. Why hero culture, one person holding the critical system knowledge, is the leadership pattern AI intensifies rather than fixes
4. How her team spread on-call knowledge with recorded trainings before AI existed to do that job
5. Why she keeps AI out of her actual coaching conversations even though she uses it to screen her inbox and draft her writing

Limor's details:
From a Woman to a Leader: https://limorbergman.substack.com/
Podcast: https://limorbergman.com/podcast/
Website: https://limorbergman.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/limorbergman

📬 Looking for practical frameworks and leadership insights? Subscribe to the Thriving In Engineering newsletter: https://thrivinginengineering.substack.com/subscribe

Her work brings leadership readiness, psychological safety, workforce attitudes, and burnout risk into AI adoption strategy, helping organizations create the conditions for AI to move from experimentation to sustainable adoption.

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why AI adoption resistance is an influence problem, not a technical one
2. The two types of leaders AI disruption is creating
3. Why a three-year AI vision is impossible for AI adoption
4. Why metacognition is becoming engineers' most valuable skill
5. Why measuring AI adoption by tokens burned backfires

Carol's details:

Website: https://www.carolpalombini.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolpalombini/
Substack: https://carolpalombini.substack.com/

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why AI writing sounds the same, and why only your own stories make it worth reading
2. Why outsourcing every decision to AI is like a runner who stops training
3. The €1,000 fake course he built on April Fool's Day as a honeypot for AI agents
4. How he uses an Activity Watch MCP server to get a daily AI-generated focus report
5. What a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat taught him about detaching from stress

Michał's details:
Perspectiveship: https://read.perspectiveship.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/poczwardowski/

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why she stopped waiting for permission to build and went independent with no team and no engineers
2. How the AI Advent Challenge grew into a community of almost 900 people with 200 learning daily
3. Why she scrapped the calendar-first version of DraftKit after listening to what writers actually wanted
4. How she built an MCP protocol that lets paid subscribers search her entire prompt library from Claude
5. Why she treats user feedback as neutral information instead of praise or criticism

Elena's details:
Prompt-Led Product: https://promptledproduct.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-product-manager/
DraftKit: https://draftkit.app
AI Advent Challenge: https://aiadventchallenge.com

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:
1: The Human-Centered AI Capability Framework: two dimensions crossed to map where you actually are with AI against where you want to go
2: Why "build with AI" means something completely different for an engineer than for a marketer or an accountant
3: Her case for why humans won't be replaced by AI, but will hit a shared limit alongside it
4: The energy test she uses to decide what to automate and what to protect
5: Open Room, her open source project teaching non-technical people, especially women, to build together with AI

Alyssa’s details:
Step Up Step Together Newsletter: https://alyssafuward.substack.com/
The Hart Studio Newsletter: https://thehartstudio.substack.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssafuward/
Website: https://alyssafuward.com/
Open Room: https://open-room-open-source.vercel.app/
You Are Already Technical Enough: alyssafuward.substack.com/p/you-are-already-technical-enough

In this conversation, we discuss:

1: Why status reports turn red two days before launch, and why calling it red early is a gift, not a failure
2: What his survey of 250 TPMs revealed about where AI adoption actually stands
3: Why bad underlying data breaks AI's usefulness before it even starts
4: His "TPM boardroom" method for pressure-testing decisions with AI personas before a meeting
5: The three stages he sees TPMs moving through, ending in what he calls an "AI architect"
6: His weekly voice-note practice for building a personal decision record

Michi’s details:
TPM Breakdowns Newsletter: https://michigoetz.substack.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michi-goetz/

In this conversation, we discuss:

1: Why moving from leading engineers to leading product managers meant trading precision for a stack of maybes
2: The "builder PM" shift, and why AI is pulling product people back toward engineering work
3: A support document that closed a deal when the spec sheet couldn't, and what it taught her about what customers actually value
4: How she uses AI to understand a customer's day to day before a single feature gets written
5: Her read on where product and engineering roles land once the current collision between them settles

Amy's details:

Product Management IRL newsletter - https://amycmitchell.substack.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycmitchell/
Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/amycmitchell.bsky.social

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why slapping an AI agent on a broken process is like hiring an intern with no onboarding — and what to fix first
2. The 80% problem: why AI gets most of a task right, but the last stretch still needs a human — true for code and dashboards alike
3. Whether empathy skills transfer to working with AI agents — and why a calm, clear communication style gets better results
4. How AI note-takers are quietly letting people zone out in meetings — and why that's a trust problem
5. Why team politics don't get smaller as teams get smaller — they just change shape
6. Her actual prediction on the AI transformation timeline — and why she doesn't buy the four-hour workday by 2027

Colette's details:
Empathy Elevated Newsletter - https://empathyelevated.substack.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colettemolteni/

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why 65% AI tooling adoption only produced 10% more PR throughput — and what the GetDx data actually tells us
2. The "building on a swamp" problem: why applying AI on top of a broken development process gives you almost no upside
3. Whether the software engineering profession is going away — and the car mechanic analogy that reframes the question
4. How Cambry is running semi-automated agent workflows right now, with agents picking up tickets, asking questions, and raising PRs
5. MCP servers worth paying attention to: Figma, Chrome/Chromium, and what Roman would actually build with them
6. Why every engineer is now effectively a manager — and the two constraints that stop anyone from being a one-person company

Roman's Details:
High Impact Engineering newsletter - https://highimpactengineering.substack.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roman-nikolaev-43465019/

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why Genetech built an internal AI research lab a year before they expected results from it — and what that patience bought them
2. The mid-level developer problem: why this layer is the most endangered, and what juniors and seniors each bring that AI can't replace
3. The productivity paradox — how AI can turn a 100-hour task into a 130-hour one, and when seniors decide it's faster to scrap the output and do it themselves
4. How small and medium business clients are using "aren't you using AI?" as a bargaining chip — without really understanding what they're asking
5. Shamim's real experiment: reviewing the same code manually and with AI, what each caught, and what she learned about where to trust it
6. Why she's comparing AI to the blockchain bubble — and why she changed her mind

Genetech Solutions - https://www.genetechsolutions.com/ 

The Leadership Lens newsletter - https://shamimrajani.substack.com/ 

LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/shamimrajani

Twitter - https://twitter.com/shamimrajani