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Hello. I'm Alex Ponomarev and welcome to Thriving in Engineering Podcast. In each episode I talk about
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people from across the software development industry about AI. We're not talking about the
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headlines, the hype, the doom mongering. Instead, we focus on honest conversations about how AI is
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actually showing up in day-to-day work. What's working, what isn't, and what others can learn
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from it. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Colette Molteni. Colette is in data analytics
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and governance, which means she's one of the people thinking hard about how AI gets deployed
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responsibly inside organizations, not just how it gets built. She also writes Empathy Elevated,
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a Substack newsletter exploring human skills for tech professionals. And she's a familiar face here
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on Thriving in Engineering. She wrote a brilliant guest post for us earlier this year about what
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happens when a no isn't really a no and what it takes to get to the truth of it. She also
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just launched a paid tier of her newsletter, but I'll let her tell you about that. Colette,
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welcome to the podcast. Tell us about the changes in your newsletter. What's what's new? Yeah. Hi,
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Alex. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for the introduction. Yes. So, the Empathy
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Elevated Substack newsletter. I've had it live for roughly about a year and a half. Very recently,
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I did adjust it. So, we now have a paid tier available. There's a few benefits of that. One
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of the major benefits is access to the inference engine which is essentially a vault of resources
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documentation to take you play by play essentially decoding the human side of working in tech whether
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you're an engineer an analyst product manager you name it that part I know can always be a bit vague
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and ambiguous I don't have fluff in there I have steps that you can take for real results. That's
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amazing. I think empathy is something that becomes increasingly more important as we get
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surrounded by AI and some robots and so on. Tell us how is the reality of working in AI day-to-day
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affecting you? What does your day-to-day actually look like and what changed in the last few years
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as things exploded? Yeah, great question, Alex. And I'll be honest with you, my work, the nature
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of it day-to-day has changed. Not so much even in the past few years, really the past six months,
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it's changed drastically. And my role was more so more of a traditional sales operations role
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within a major tech company working in the SaaS division and I was doing more of the usual in the
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background working with stakeholders for building out of dashboards working through troubleshooting
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within various programs presentation to leadership about what we're innovating what we
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are implementing. My work has transitioned though drastically in the past six months where instead
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of talking about how we are going to provide direction to our stakeholders often I work with
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leaders, customer success managers, sales etc. It's more about okay how can we translate this
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information into the agent that we are going to provide for them to save them this time versus me
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just talking at them. I'm giving them a resource that they can leverage in real time based off the
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feedback I've received. So my job has transitioned from traditional building out of resources and
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building the resource the AI resource that they can leverage. That's that's very interesting. Do
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you feel the pace of change in your day-to-day work because something new is coming out every
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week, every day really? Yes, actually and I had this conversation quite recently even with some of
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the vendors that supply one of the programs that I work in very frequently how there are changes now
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it seems month to month even halfway through our deployment of one of our AI agents recently the UI
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changed for the better but we did have to go back and make some tweaks in the background to make it
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applicable to this new UI I changes I remember early in my career and I've been in the world
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of data analytics for over a decade now where you saw changes in deployments. It seemed every year,
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every two to three years a new version of something. You're now looking at every month,
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two, three months max in some cases. Yeah, we just live in this constant change. Because
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before you could say, okay, there's this new technology came out. whatever it is it was
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blockchain right before that we had big data and you know mobile but you could say okay
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it's going to take us I don't know maybe a year to adapt maybe it feels like this now that's
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how I think but now never ending change we just live in it we we get try to get comfortable there
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I wanted to ask you how the environment around you changed because we definitely all feel that and
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this changes the like human-to-human dynamics in the team and I'm curious if you're noticing this
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and how how do you think we can help each other to to just not just survive but also thrive in this
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new environment? Yeah, it's definitely changed. There are some things that have not changed.
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The things that have not changed, we still have to deal with office politics, corporate environments,
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different office cultures, whether you are remote, hybrid, in person, working with others depending
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different geographies across different time zones. That has not changed. Now having AI in
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the picture though has enabled us to do some other things quite well. It's also I think in some other
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ways it's made us not participating in other things quite as well either. Let me break those
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both down for us. One thing I think that it's done very well in terms of I'll give an example like in
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meetings having a meeting notetaker. Now I still actually like to take some handwritten notes. I
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just find my own comprehension. I like to have that and even the AI noteaker any program I've
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used will almost always warn you make sure to validate for accuracy and I've seen that I've
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seen that where it misinterprets something I know from a very large meeting I was recently a part
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of it referenced a program that we haven't even used in over a year but because something in the
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conversation had picked up it misinterpreted us and it was like revise this thing in this program
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which we had no plans to do okay so where it can come in to be not so good. And this actually ties
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into the first point if we are too reliant on it where it is used as an excuse to perhaps zone out
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because oh, I'm going to catch up on the notes later or I'm going to rely on this as if it is
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100% true if everything got documented correctly and not take a critical eye to it because you look
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at something and maybe you're you're using an AI tool. you really do need to look. I am I don't
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shy away from leveraging AI perhaps to double check an email correspondence I'm going to send
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out. I had the other day though three times in a row where it was referencing an incorrect person
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on the chain [laughter] and eventually I just I just had to correct that one sentence. The rest
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of it was fine. But something like that can could cause some friction mistrust. You know
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why are you referencing this? we could make that human interaction more complicated. So, there's
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benefits and also areas where you can fall into pitfalls. It's a balance. I'm also noticing that
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if you don't catch these little things, it it kind of hurts the trust because then people think, oh,
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you're just blindly copy pasting whatever AI tells you. So, yeah, definitely interesting dynamic. Do
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you think at least today AI creates more problems in the workplace for us and by problems I mean
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like specific things that I see for example. Yeah, workload is part of it or expecting more
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output wi-i which it does help you to move quicker but I think there are still some misconceptions
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about depending on the AI tooling you are using to what extent it can help you. For example,
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one of the things I always emphasize and we have as part of our framework on our team where we
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deploy AI is we have to have the foundation of the process and the tasks and be able to break it down
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into multiple parts. I come from a lean six sigma background where we did this day in and day out
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even before we were leveraging AI. Without that foundation, you cannot train an AI agent generally
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just to go out and guess. I mean, if that's the directive you're giving it to get advice, sure.
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But do not expect the AI you are building to do it better than perhaps you could say like an intern
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who is just starting on the job without much direction. You have to provide them directives
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on what to do. If you have a broken process to begin with, slapping an AI agent on top of it,
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if you have not worked through and done that groundwork, which is not as exciting as having
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the AI, you're not necessarily going to get the end result you want. So the problem in summary
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with that is there being a misconception when a problem arises which perhaps is a process issue
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or a documentation issue or a staffing issue or a skills gap where it's like oh well can we build AI
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for that what do you want to build the AI for what are you tackling what is the challenge and then
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let's explore the AI if you don't get past that you have to get past that. And it sounds like the
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misconception is that no like this idea of we're not going to need humans with AI and it at least
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so far it looks like we actually do need humans to manage the agents to build a process around
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them. Kind of like you need surprise surprise managers who seem to do nothing. They're just
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moving between I don't know between the raindrops don't really do anything. But somehow everything
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falls apart without managers. I mean I certainly as a manager myself sometimes I look at my day and
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I'm like where did my day go? On that topic though with AI and the human intervention you bring up at
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this stage yes. Will we see more autonomous AI in the future? I believe we will and we already are
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in some places. What I interpret more as I look to the future though is and we hear about it the
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creation of more jobs as a result of AI jobs we cannot even dream of today. I mean truthfully the
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work I'm doing now with working and coding AI agents and building this is something I would
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have never imagined growing up in my teen years. I would have never even I had no concept of this
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back then. I was teaching myself code and how to build websites and I had no assistance other than
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giant books that I bought at the bookstore and testing. I had no vibe coding type technology
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available to me and I think that's only going to exponentially increase what we are able to do.
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Don't you think AI is taking the fun out of what we're doing day-to-day or maybe it's the
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contrary and it actually makes us do more creative things and you know does the routine for us. Yeah,
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I think it depends on your role truthfully. It depends on your role and what you personally
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extract your joy from and what you enjoy doing. Like personally I've never like the experience
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of going circles with my code and continuously getting an error and it being vague and not being
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able to figure it out and AI does not always resolve it for me. But as of late I have found
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working with AI to bounce my code off of and hey what am I missing or maybe it's just like a syntax
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error something so silly because my coffee has not kicked in yet in my system and I'm
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not looking at it clearly. I find it very helpful for those types of things. The parts that I have
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found with AI that have really helped me taking some of the effort out of having to make like a
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slide deck that I have to present. I have no issue presenting. I actually like presenting and getting
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up. I'm one of those odd people who actually likes to do it like being able to share the message
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to a room and be able to talk about the work me and my team is doing. But I've been able to get
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rid of some of that drudgery of being able to put together the slides like, "Oh, did I put these
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slides in the right order? And I know this is my audience. I know this is the room. Am I stacking
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this in the right order?" Is like a person who knows nothing about the topic, does this make
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sense what I put together? And leveraging AI as a partner for that. I found that to be quite
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helpful. Yeah. Given I have the ultimate say, I'm the human. I know the emotions that the room and
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the personalities and people will face. But I have found that that that has helped me bring
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actually more joy to what I'm doing in my daily work. Being able to take care of those mundane
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tasks and have those handled, it frees up my time. Yeah I'm also in this camp. They remember in this
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in the early days of ChatGPT there were stories of AI model breaking out of the researchers computer
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and taking over something like taking over the internet something like this like what do you
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think is real and what what is hype today? Now I don't have a crystal ball but I will say just for
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me personally I am enthusiastic about the future. For me I view what is happening with technology
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the next level of us leveling up as humanity. When we have these tools at our fingertips to take care
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of these mundane and more tactile tasks. We will free up more time to build community,
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go back to our roots of connecting with others and being less secluded, which I can be, I work
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from home most days and sometimes I don't interact with other people in person. But I have found with
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AI it being able to free up my time. Will that positive net benefit though come immediately? No.
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And right now, I'd honestly say we are in a bit of that growing pain stage where truthfully there
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are jobs being lost. There are people who are going to have to re-skill. Those new jobs are not
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being recreated just like that with a snap of the fingers. It's going to take some time for us to
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fully I think realize the benefits. We're seeing some benefits but we're also witnessing loss and
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those new jobs that are going to come about that we can't even dream of. The new time savings,
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the innovation with it, we're going through that growth period. In terms of worst case scenarios,
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I mean, given I'm a big sci-fi person. I'm a huge fan of the Terminator series. So, that too would
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give me some nightmares. And I I do make jokes about it sometimes with Skynets or anything else.
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Do I think that's what we are facing? No. Here is another question that I'm I'm sure you will
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appreciate. In the beginning you mentioned that yes there a lot of things are changing but are
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a lot of things are staying the same like the team dynamics, the politics in the corporate world,
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and all these things they're not going anywhere there is this idea that organizations will become
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smaller that because of AI there will be larger number of companies, of products and the teams
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will be smaller because one person will be able to do 20 things at a time and so on. Do you think in
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smaller teams that we'll see more of the topic of politics and interpersonal relationships is less
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is less important than for larger organizations, larger teams. Yeah. Having worked in both small
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teams and larger teams, I've worked in a company of only about like 30 people all the way up to
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like 30,000 people. I've worked in both extremes. So, I'd unequivocally say no, it it's not less
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relevant. It just changes how you approach it. Whether you are talking to an audience of perhaps
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one person more like a one-on-one versus talking to five people or you're presenting to 500,
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it changes the dynamic of how you approach empathizing with your audience and kicking in
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your other emotional intelligence skills. But the skills are still relevant. It's just knowing how
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to adapt for that particular environment. That is why your library that will be part of your
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of the paid tier on your newsletter will always be valuable and interesting. Do you think that
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we can draw parallels between how a manager works with their human team and with how you would
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manage AI agents? And of course agents they don't have emotions and empathy per se is not probably
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not applicable, but for me empathy is about understanding how other people view the world
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and adjusting your message to be received the best way possible. Do you think skills like that
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are relevant when working with AI agents or LLMs? Yeah, absolutely. And here's why. As much as the
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AI agent does not have feelings, of course, it only has like a textbook definition of empathy or
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emotional intelligence or how to read the room per se. But for you as the person who is programming
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the agent, well, this agent is going to be people facing in the end, right? So it you have to
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train that in to be able to at least take in the information even though it's not feeling anything.
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You have to provide that human input. You yourself though aside from AI agents if you're working with
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AI technology if you are cool calm collected and you are explaining your work in a manner
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that is understandable even to this inanimate technology that does not feel anything. You're
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probably going to get better results versus being annoyed and I mean I guess you know writing in all
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caps and being you know irritated with it. That doesn't help you at all. It just it will mirror
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that back to you and you will not get the type of work quality product you want. I've noticed
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this interestingly with somebody that I work with with a very high degree of EQ who is very detail-
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oriented and also writes out things as if she is talking to a person and explaining it very clear
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and building upon a conversation when she's trying to build out something programmatically and her
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results are significantly improved. Conversely, she also recognizes and has admitted, "Oh, I got
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so frustrated. It wasn't giving me what I wanted and then it just stopped talking to me working
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with the chatbot." [laughter] And that's that's not that's not based out of emotion, right? It's
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not it's not that it's not that the AI is angry at you. It's just I I suppose it's overloaded or
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your directives are not clear at that point. So, there isn't really anything to provide you back.
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So yes, understanding how to engage with other people is helpful and applicable to how you
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work with AI technology. It's a very interesting direction. What I see among the engineers is that
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a lot of us are either introverted or just not great at communication for all sorts of reasons.
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But I'm noticing that how engineers communicate after working with Claude Code, Cursor,
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Codex is changing because as you said they get used to explaining themselves very well
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providing the context surprisingly you get better results if you provide good context
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and they're like oh this is how it works and now they're doing this with humans with their team
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teammates. Do you think that the result of of the transformation that is going on that we will see
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the result of the transformation in let's say in 2027 like a lot of people are predicting or it's
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like we're very early in the process and it's something that already started but most likely
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will arrive at where we're supposed to arrive in 5 to 10 years. Yeah, I if I had to bet on it,
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I would say probably a few years, not 2027. I think we are getting closer to where we want to
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be in the transformation and people talking openly about, hey, these are the limitations of AI.
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These are the advantages this is what it can replace this is what it cannot replace and having
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that dialogue but having that transformation where we want to see where hey you know what let's say
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maybe I'm just saying this hypothetically maybe as humanity we don't have to work as hard maybe
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we are down to that 4-hour a day work day right I mean that that would be fantastic I think a lot of
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people would love that to have more leisure time are we going to get there as early as 2027 2028
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unlikely. No, not at the current trajectory. It will take more movement and transformation and
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collective change to see that happen. Could we get there eventually? Never say never. I mean,
00:24:21.150 --> 00:24:28.510
we had our ancestors working before us sometimes 12 or 14 hour days. You know, farm work, very
00:24:28.510 --> 00:24:37.870
manual labor. Look how far we have come and even a hundred years really blink of an eye so quick.
00:24:37.870 --> 00:24:46.190
So never say never. If you could give one advice to to our audience what would be the thing you
00:24:46.190 --> 00:24:55.390
would recommend them to focus on to you know to thrive in the age of AI but also to stay human and
00:24:55.950 --> 00:25:04.510
to stay empathetic and Yeah. Yeah. Well, you just named one of the words of course just
00:25:04.510 --> 00:25:11.390
as the name implies with my Substack Empathy Elevated. Yeah, elevating your empathy. What
00:25:11.390 --> 00:25:19.230
I would say is working consciously to do this. 98% of the population, we are capable of being
00:25:19.230 --> 00:25:24.670
empathetic. There there's a small percentage that actually is not, but that's for another
00:25:24.670 --> 00:25:31.230
chat some other time. It can be learned. It can be developed these people skills even though the
00:25:31.230 --> 00:25:37.550
task feels impossible at times with the right tools, the right systems and conscious effort.
00:25:37.550 --> 00:25:42.190
You gave that example earlier of some of the engineers that you've witnessed who are a little
00:25:42.190 --> 00:25:47.230
bit more introverted or perhaps like the people part is a little bit tough. Very early in my
00:25:47.230 --> 00:25:55.390
career, I was silent in most meetings. I could not speak up. I felt that perhaps I was interrupting
00:25:55.390 --> 00:25:59.950
people and then when I did speak up, I would often get puzzled looks. People didn't know what I was
00:25:59.950 --> 00:26:05.550
talking about. I've been affectionately called quirky before. I'm still sometimes called that,
00:26:05.550 --> 00:26:13.310
but only in a fun way because of my humor at times. But the point being that this is not it's
00:26:13.310 --> 00:26:19.150
not magic. It's not some far-off concept that is abstract. You can obtain it and having that
00:26:19.150 --> 00:26:25.070
differentiating factor with your humanity as you said Alex regardless of the technology regardless
00:26:25.070 --> 00:26:31.310
of the era this will continue to be relevant to you as a human as your differentiator as your
00:26:31.310 --> 00:26:39.470
strength as we yeah encounter on this new frontier where technology is changing monthly. This is
00:26:39.470 --> 00:26:47.870
great advice thank you so much I'm sure our viewers and listeners would appreciate it. Great
00:26:47.870 --> 00:26:54.910
but thank you so much for joining us today. It was a great conversation. We're looking forward to
00:26:54.910 --> 00:27:04.670
read more of the episodes of your newsletter and we'll enjoy your new library and paid membership.
00:27:04.670 --> 00:27:14.270
Thank you for joining. Yeah. Thank you, Alex, for having me on. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.
00:00:08.270 --> 00:00:16.590
Hello. I'm Alex Ponomarev and welcome to Thriving in Engineering Podcast. In each episode I talk about
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people from across the software development industry about AI. We're not talking about the
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headlines, the hype, the doom mongering. Instead, we focus on honest conversations about how AI is
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actually showing up in day-to-day work. What's working, what isn't, and what others can learn
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from it. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Colette Molteni. Colette is in data analytics
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and governance, which means she's one of the people thinking hard about how AI gets deployed
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responsibly inside organizations, not just how it gets built. She also writes Empathy Elevated,
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a Substack newsletter exploring human skills for tech professionals. And she's a familiar face here
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on Thriving in Engineering. She wrote a brilliant guest post for us earlier this year about what
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happens when a no isn't really a no and what it takes to get to the truth of it. She also
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just launched a paid tier of her newsletter, but I'll let her tell you about that. Colette,
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welcome to the podcast. Tell us about the changes in your newsletter. What's what's new? Yeah. Hi,
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Alex. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for the introduction. Yes. So, the Empathy
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Elevated Substack newsletter. I've had it live for roughly about a year and a half. Very recently,
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I did adjust it. So, we now have a paid tier available. There's a few benefits of that. One
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of the major benefits is access to the inference engine which is essentially a vault of resources
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documentation to take you play by play essentially decoding the human side of working in tech whether
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you're an engineer an analyst product manager you name it that part I know can always be a bit vague
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and ambiguous I don't have fluff in there I have steps that you can take for real results. That's
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amazing. I think empathy is something that becomes increasingly more important as we get
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surrounded by AI and some robots and so on. Tell us how is the reality of working in AI day-to-day
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affecting you? What does your day-to-day actually look like and what changed in the last few years
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as things exploded? Yeah, great question, Alex. And I'll be honest with you, my work, the nature
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of it day-to-day has changed. Not so much even in the past few years, really the past six months,
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it's changed drastically. And my role was more so more of a traditional sales operations role
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within a major tech company working in the SaaS division and I was doing more of the usual in the
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background working with stakeholders for building out of dashboards working through troubleshooting
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within various programs presentation to leadership about what we're innovating what we
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are implementing. My work has transitioned though drastically in the past six months where instead
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of talking about how we are going to provide direction to our stakeholders often I work with
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leaders, customer success managers, sales etc. It's more about okay how can we translate this
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information into the agent that we are going to provide for them to save them this time versus me
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just talking at them. I'm giving them a resource that they can leverage in real time based off the
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feedback I've received. So my job has transitioned from traditional building out of resources and
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building the resource the AI resource that they can leverage. That's that's very interesting. Do
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you feel the pace of change in your day-to-day work because something new is coming out every
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week, every day really? Yes, actually and I had this conversation quite recently even with some of
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the vendors that supply one of the programs that I work in very frequently how there are changes now
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it seems month to month even halfway through our deployment of one of our AI agents recently the UI
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changed for the better but we did have to go back and make some tweaks in the background to make it
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applicable to this new UI I changes I remember early in my career and I've been in the world
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of data analytics for over a decade now where you saw changes in deployments. It seemed every year,
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every two to three years a new version of something. You're now looking at every month,
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two, three months max in some cases. Yeah, we just live in this constant change. Because
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before you could say, okay, there's this new technology came out. whatever it is it was
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blockchain right before that we had big data and you know mobile but you could say okay
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it's going to take us I don't know maybe a year to adapt maybe it feels like this now that's
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how I think but now never ending change we just live in it we we get try to get comfortable there
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I wanted to ask you how the environment around you changed because we definitely all feel that and
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this changes the like human-to-human dynamics in the team and I'm curious if you're noticing this
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and how how do you think we can help each other to to just not just survive but also thrive in this
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new environment? Yeah, it's definitely changed. There are some things that have not changed.
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The things that have not changed, we still have to deal with office politics, corporate environments,
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different office cultures, whether you are remote, hybrid, in person, working with others depending
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different geographies across different time zones. That has not changed. Now having AI in
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the picture though has enabled us to do some other things quite well. It's also I think in some other
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ways it's made us not participating in other things quite as well either. Let me break those
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both down for us. One thing I think that it's done very well in terms of I'll give an example like in
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meetings having a meeting notetaker. Now I still actually like to take some handwritten notes. I
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just find my own comprehension. I like to have that and even the AI noteaker any program I've
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used will almost always warn you make sure to validate for accuracy and I've seen that I've
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seen that where it misinterprets something I know from a very large meeting I was recently a part
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of it referenced a program that we haven't even used in over a year but because something in the
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conversation had picked up it misinterpreted us and it was like revise this thing in this program
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which we had no plans to do okay so where it can come in to be not so good. And this actually ties
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into the first point if we are too reliant on it where it is used as an excuse to perhaps zone out
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because oh, I'm going to catch up on the notes later or I'm going to rely on this as if it is
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100% true if everything got documented correctly and not take a critical eye to it because you look
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at something and maybe you're you're using an AI tool. you really do need to look. I am I don't
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shy away from leveraging AI perhaps to double check an email correspondence I'm going to send
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out. I had the other day though three times in a row where it was referencing an incorrect person
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on the chain [laughter] and eventually I just I just had to correct that one sentence. The rest
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of it was fine. But something like that can could cause some friction mistrust. You know
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why are you referencing this? we could make that human interaction more complicated. So, there's
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benefits and also areas where you can fall into pitfalls. It's a balance. I'm also noticing that
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if you don't catch these little things, it it kind of hurts the trust because then people think, oh,
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you're just blindly copy pasting whatever AI tells you. So, yeah, definitely interesting dynamic. Do
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you think at least today AI creates more problems in the workplace for us and by problems I mean
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like specific things that I see for example. Yeah, workload is part of it or expecting more
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output wi-i which it does help you to move quicker but I think there are still some misconceptions
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about depending on the AI tooling you are using to what extent it can help you. For example,
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one of the things I always emphasize and we have as part of our framework on our team where we
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deploy AI is we have to have the foundation of the process and the tasks and be able to break it down
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into multiple parts. I come from a lean six sigma background where we did this day in and day out
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even before we were leveraging AI. Without that foundation, you cannot train an AI agent generally
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just to go out and guess. I mean, if that's the directive you're giving it to get advice, sure.
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But do not expect the AI you are building to do it better than perhaps you could say like an intern
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who is just starting on the job without much direction. You have to provide them directives
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on what to do. If you have a broken process to begin with, slapping an AI agent on top of it,
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if you have not worked through and done that groundwork, which is not as exciting as having
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the AI, you're not necessarily going to get the end result you want. So the problem in summary
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with that is there being a misconception when a problem arises which perhaps is a process issue
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or a documentation issue or a staffing issue or a skills gap where it's like oh well can we build AI
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for that what do you want to build the AI for what are you tackling what is the challenge and then
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let's explore the AI if you don't get past that you have to get past that. And it sounds like the
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misconception is that no like this idea of we're not going to need humans with AI and it at least
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so far it looks like we actually do need humans to manage the agents to build a process around
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them. Kind of like you need surprise surprise managers who seem to do nothing. They're just
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moving between I don't know between the raindrops don't really do anything. But somehow everything
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falls apart without managers. I mean I certainly as a manager myself sometimes I look at my day and
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I'm like where did my day go? On that topic though with AI and the human intervention you bring up at
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this stage yes. Will we see more autonomous AI in the future? I believe we will and we already are
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in some places. What I interpret more as I look to the future though is and we hear about it the
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creation of more jobs as a result of AI jobs we cannot even dream of today. I mean truthfully the
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work I'm doing now with working and coding AI agents and building this is something I would
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have never imagined growing up in my teen years. I would have never even I had no concept of this
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back then. I was teaching myself code and how to build websites and I had no assistance other than
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giant books that I bought at the bookstore and testing. I had no vibe coding type technology
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available to me and I think that's only going to exponentially increase what we are able to do.
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Don't you think AI is taking the fun out of what we're doing day-to-day or maybe it's the
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contrary and it actually makes us do more creative things and you know does the routine for us. Yeah,
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I think it depends on your role truthfully. It depends on your role and what you personally
00:13:06.750 --> 00:13:14.510
extract your joy from and what you enjoy doing. Like personally I've never like the experience
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of going circles with my code and continuously getting an error and it being vague and not being
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able to figure it out and AI does not always resolve it for me. But as of late I have found
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working with AI to bounce my code off of and hey what am I missing or maybe it's just like a syntax
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error something so silly because my coffee has not kicked in yet in my system and I'm
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not looking at it clearly. I find it very helpful for those types of things. The parts that I have
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found with AI that have really helped me taking some of the effort out of having to make like a
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slide deck that I have to present. I have no issue presenting. I actually like presenting and getting
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up. I'm one of those odd people who actually likes to do it like being able to share the message
00:14:01.710 --> 00:14:09.390
to a room and be able to talk about the work me and my team is doing. But I've been able to get
00:14:09.390 --> 00:14:15.870
rid of some of that drudgery of being able to put together the slides like, "Oh, did I put these
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slides in the right order? And I know this is my audience. I know this is the room. Am I stacking
00:14:21.150 --> 00:14:25.870
this in the right order?" Is like a person who knows nothing about the topic, does this make
00:14:25.870 --> 00:14:31.310
sense what I put together? And leveraging AI as a partner for that. I found that to be quite
00:14:31.310 --> 00:14:38.110
helpful. Yeah. Given I have the ultimate say, I'm the human. I know the emotions that the room and
00:14:38.110 --> 00:14:44.670
the personalities and people will face. But I have found that that that has helped me bring
00:14:44.670 --> 00:14:49.150
actually more joy to what I'm doing in my daily work. Being able to take care of those mundane
00:14:49.150 --> 00:14:56.750
tasks and have those handled, it frees up my time. Yeah I'm also in this camp. They remember in this
00:14:56.750 --> 00:15:06.830
in the early days of ChatGPT there were stories of AI model breaking out of the researchers computer
00:15:06.830 --> 00:15:12.910
and taking over something like taking over the internet something like this like what do you
00:15:12.910 --> 00:15:22.190
think is real and what what is hype today? Now I don't have a crystal ball but I will say just for
00:15:22.190 --> 00:15:29.630
me personally I am enthusiastic about the future. For me I view what is happening with technology
00:15:29.630 --> 00:15:35.710
the next level of us leveling up as humanity. When we have these tools at our fingertips to take care
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of these mundane and more tactile tasks. We will free up more time to build community,
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go back to our roots of connecting with others and being less secluded, which I can be, I work
00:15:50.270 --> 00:15:55.710
from home most days and sometimes I don't interact with other people in person. But I have found with
00:15:55.710 --> 00:16:02.350
AI it being able to free up my time. Will that positive net benefit though come immediately? No.
00:16:02.350 --> 00:16:10.190
And right now, I'd honestly say we are in a bit of that growing pain stage where truthfully there
00:16:10.190 --> 00:16:15.710
are jobs being lost. There are people who are going to have to re-skill. Those new jobs are not
00:16:15.710 --> 00:16:22.910
being recreated just like that with a snap of the fingers. It's going to take some time for us to
00:16:22.910 --> 00:16:29.390
fully I think realize the benefits. We're seeing some benefits but we're also witnessing loss and
00:16:29.390 --> 00:16:34.910
those new jobs that are going to come about that we can't even dream of. The new time savings,
00:16:34.910 --> 00:16:41.790
the innovation with it, we're going through that growth period. In terms of worst case scenarios,
00:16:41.790 --> 00:16:48.430
I mean, given I'm a big sci-fi person. I'm a huge fan of the Terminator series. So, that too would
00:16:48.430 --> 00:16:55.630
give me some nightmares. And I I do make jokes about it sometimes with Skynets or anything else.
00:16:55.630 --> 00:17:03.150
Do I think that's what we are facing? No. Here is another question that I'm I'm sure you will
00:17:03.150 --> 00:17:10.670
appreciate. In the beginning you mentioned that yes there a lot of things are changing but are
00:17:10.670 --> 00:17:21.390
a lot of things are staying the same like the team dynamics, the politics in the corporate world,
00:17:22.190 --> 00:17:30.990
and all these things they're not going anywhere there is this idea that organizations will become
00:17:30.990 --> 00:17:38.350
smaller that because of AI there will be larger number of companies, of products and the teams
00:17:38.350 --> 00:17:45.390
will be smaller because one person will be able to do 20 things at a time and so on. Do you think in
00:17:45.390 --> 00:17:56.510
smaller teams that we'll see more of the topic of politics and interpersonal relationships is less
00:17:56.510 --> 00:18:04.670
is less important than for larger organizations, larger teams. Yeah. Having worked in both small
00:18:04.670 --> 00:18:12.270
teams and larger teams, I've worked in a company of only about like 30 people all the way up to
00:18:12.270 --> 00:18:19.710
like 30,000 people. I've worked in both extremes. So, I'd unequivocally say no, it it's not less
00:18:19.710 --> 00:18:24.990
relevant. It just changes how you approach it. Whether you are talking to an audience of perhaps
00:18:24.990 --> 00:18:31.230
one person more like a one-on-one versus talking to five people or you're presenting to 500,
00:18:31.230 --> 00:18:37.550
it changes the dynamic of how you approach empathizing with your audience and kicking in
00:18:37.550 --> 00:18:43.150
your other emotional intelligence skills. But the skills are still relevant. It's just knowing how
00:18:43.150 --> 00:18:52.830
to adapt for that particular environment. That is why your library that will be part of your
00:18:52.830 --> 00:19:00.670
of the paid tier on your newsletter will always be valuable and interesting. Do you think that
00:19:02.270 --> 00:19:12.190
we can draw parallels between how a manager works with their human team and with how you would
00:19:12.190 --> 00:19:20.990
manage AI agents? And of course agents they don't have emotions and empathy per se is not probably
00:19:20.990 --> 00:19:28.590
not applicable, but for me empathy is about understanding how other people view the world
00:19:28.590 --> 00:19:38.190
and adjusting your message to be received the best way possible. Do you think skills like that
00:19:38.190 --> 00:19:46.910
are relevant when working with AI agents or LLMs? Yeah, absolutely. And here's why. As much as the
00:19:46.910 --> 00:19:54.430
AI agent does not have feelings, of course, it only has like a textbook definition of empathy or
00:19:54.430 --> 00:20:02.110
emotional intelligence or how to read the room per se. But for you as the person who is programming
00:20:02.110 --> 00:20:07.230
the agent, well, this agent is going to be people facing in the end, right? So it you have to
00:20:07.230 --> 00:20:13.470
train that in to be able to at least take in the information even though it's not feeling anything.
00:20:13.470 --> 00:20:18.270
You have to provide that human input. You yourself though aside from AI agents if you're working with
00:20:18.270 --> 00:20:25.310
AI technology if you are cool calm collected and you are explaining your work in a manner
00:20:25.310 --> 00:20:32.270
that is understandable even to this inanimate technology that does not feel anything. You're
00:20:32.270 --> 00:20:40.030
probably going to get better results versus being annoyed and I mean I guess you know writing in all
00:20:40.030 --> 00:20:45.310
caps and being you know irritated with it. That doesn't help you at all. It just it will mirror
00:20:45.310 --> 00:20:52.110
that back to you and you will not get the type of work quality product you want. I've noticed
00:20:52.110 --> 00:21:00.030
this interestingly with somebody that I work with with a very high degree of EQ who is very detail-
00:21:00.030 --> 00:21:08.590
oriented and also writes out things as if she is talking to a person and explaining it very clear
00:21:08.590 --> 00:21:15.150
and building upon a conversation when she's trying to build out something programmatically and her
00:21:15.150 --> 00:21:21.790
results are significantly improved. Conversely, she also recognizes and has admitted, "Oh, I got
00:21:21.790 --> 00:21:26.830
so frustrated. It wasn't giving me what I wanted and then it just stopped talking to me working
00:21:26.830 --> 00:21:32.110
with the chatbot." [laughter] And that's that's not that's not based out of emotion, right? It's
00:21:32.110 --> 00:21:39.310
not it's not that it's not that the AI is angry at you. It's just I I suppose it's overloaded or
00:21:39.310 --> 00:21:44.030
your directives are not clear at that point. So, there isn't really anything to provide you back.
00:21:44.030 --> 00:21:52.430
So yes, understanding how to engage with other people is helpful and applicable to how you
00:21:52.430 --> 00:22:01.790
work with AI technology. It's a very interesting direction. What I see among the engineers is that
00:22:01.790 --> 00:22:09.310
a lot of us are either introverted or just not great at communication for all sorts of reasons.
00:22:10.510 --> 00:22:19.870
But I'm noticing that how engineers communicate after working with Claude Code, Cursor,
00:22:19.870 --> 00:22:28.350
Codex is changing because as you said they get used to explaining themselves very well
00:22:28.350 --> 00:22:33.550
providing the context surprisingly you get better results if you provide good context
00:22:33.550 --> 00:22:40.510
and they're like oh this is how it works and now they're doing this with humans with their team
00:22:40.510 --> 00:22:52.990
teammates. Do you think that the result of of the transformation that is going on that we will see
00:22:52.990 --> 00:23:02.110
the result of the transformation in let's say in 2027 like a lot of people are predicting or it's
00:23:02.750 --> 00:23:10.990
like we're very early in the process and it's something that already started but most likely
00:23:13.070 --> 00:23:22.510
will arrive at where we're supposed to arrive in 5 to 10 years. Yeah, I if I had to bet on it,
00:23:22.510 --> 00:23:30.030
I would say probably a few years, not 2027. I think we are getting closer to where we want to
00:23:30.030 --> 00:23:36.190
be in the transformation and people talking openly about, hey, these are the limitations of AI.
00:23:36.190 --> 00:23:41.470
These are the advantages this is what it can replace this is what it cannot replace and having
00:23:41.470 --> 00:23:48.270
that dialogue but having that transformation where we want to see where hey you know what let's say
00:23:48.270 --> 00:23:53.870
maybe I'm just saying this hypothetically maybe as humanity we don't have to work as hard maybe
00:23:53.870 --> 00:24:00.110
we are down to that 4-hour a day work day right I mean that that would be fantastic I think a lot of
00:24:00.110 --> 00:24:05.390
people would love that to have more leisure time are we going to get there as early as 2027 2028
00:24:06.590 --> 00:24:13.710
unlikely. No, not at the current trajectory. It will take more movement and transformation and
00:24:13.710 --> 00:24:21.150
collective change to see that happen. Could we get there eventually? Never say never. I mean,
00:24:21.150 --> 00:24:28.510
we had our ancestors working before us sometimes 12 or 14 hour days. You know, farm work, very
00:24:28.510 --> 00:24:37.870
manual labor. Look how far we have come and even a hundred years really blink of an eye so quick.
00:24:37.870 --> 00:24:46.190
So never say never. If you could give one advice to to our audience what would be the thing you
00:24:46.190 --> 00:24:55.390
would recommend them to focus on to you know to thrive in the age of AI but also to stay human and
00:24:55.950 --> 00:25:04.510
to stay empathetic and Yeah. Yeah. Well, you just named one of the words of course just
00:25:04.510 --> 00:25:11.390
as the name implies with my Substack Empathy Elevated. Yeah, elevating your empathy. What
00:25:11.390 --> 00:25:19.230
I would say is working consciously to do this. 98% of the population, we are capable of being
00:25:19.230 --> 00:25:24.670
empathetic. There there's a small percentage that actually is not, but that's for another
00:25:24.670 --> 00:25:31.230
chat some other time. It can be learned. It can be developed these people skills even though the
00:25:31.230 --> 00:25:37.550
task feels impossible at times with the right tools, the right systems and conscious effort.
00:25:37.550 --> 00:25:42.190
You gave that example earlier of some of the engineers that you've witnessed who are a little
00:25:42.190 --> 00:25:47.230
bit more introverted or perhaps like the people part is a little bit tough. Very early in my
00:25:47.230 --> 00:25:55.390
career, I was silent in most meetings. I could not speak up. I felt that perhaps I was interrupting
00:25:55.390 --> 00:25:59.950
people and then when I did speak up, I would often get puzzled looks. People didn't know what I was
00:25:59.950 --> 00:26:05.550
talking about. I've been affectionately called quirky before. I'm still sometimes called that,
00:26:05.550 --> 00:26:13.310
but only in a fun way because of my humor at times. But the point being that this is not it's
00:26:13.310 --> 00:26:19.150
not magic. It's not some far-off concept that is abstract. You can obtain it and having that
00:26:19.150 --> 00:26:25.070
differentiating factor with your humanity as you said Alex regardless of the technology regardless
00:26:25.070 --> 00:26:31.310
of the era this will continue to be relevant to you as a human as your differentiator as your
00:26:31.310 --> 00:26:39.470
strength as we yeah encounter on this new frontier where technology is changing monthly. This is
00:26:39.470 --> 00:26:47.870
great advice thank you so much I'm sure our viewers and listeners would appreciate it. Great
00:26:47.870 --> 00:26:54.910
but thank you so much for joining us today. It was a great conversation. We're looking forward to
00:26:54.910 --> 00:27:04.670
read more of the episodes of your newsletter and we'll enjoy your new library and paid membership.
00:27:04.670 --> 00:27:14.270
Thank you for joining. Yeah. Thank you, Alex, for having me on. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.
