Strategic insights on technology leadership, engineering culture, and building great teams
Individual AI productivity gains are real. But they're not compounding at team or org level — and the popular fixes (AI in the docs, AI in the calls) miss the point entirely. You can solve information. You can't solve alignment with a transcript.
Two respected outlets, the same month, gave leaders opposite advice on AI agents: treat them like employees, or never. Both answered the wrong question. What transfers isn't deciding what an agent is — it's directing the system it sits in.
AI made building software nearly free, but it did nothing for the other two costs in shipping it: deciding what to build, and aligning people around the decision. That's where the money went.