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There's certainly a lot of nonsensical pressure to use AI from executives, which all seem to drink at the same information trough that has decreed "AI is the hip new thing". I've written about my experiences with that here. That's a fad and will probably go away within a year or two.
I'd still recommend playing around with AI and finding where it can add value. I'm doing roughly 30-40% less work in my software engineering role because of it, with the savings being redirected into building more robust systems, as well as many hours into Factorio.
Serious take: This makes you a better developer.
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I enjoyed reading this, especially the part about your CTO. I am 4 years into my career (31 is still young right?), and I have met my organizations CTO exactly once and he came across as a complete moron, but he had a helper/fixer/(handler?), who actually had real technical competency of the sort I would expect from someone with a CTO job title.
He has probably just been out of the game a long time and has specialized in non technical things like "how to manage managers/directors," "political tactics to protect the engineering department's budget," "communicating the value of technical projects to the head of accounting who does not care about tech at all," plus all the mundane process, paperwork, and ego soothing one must do to keep things running smoothly. He probably hasn't written serious code in years and may not have more than a high level understanding of what his department's tech stacks are and how its products works, but that doesn't make him a moron.
Alternatively, he may be not do any of the above and might just be a smooth talking glad-hander. Your department might be a dumpster fire and he's just very adept at shifting blame or sweeping the fires under the rug. That would suck, but it also means he is far from a moron.
That’s a fair point, if you can become the cto for medium sized organization, you must be very smart (or at least very crafty!). It would have been more accurate to say that I was unimpressed with the level of technical knowledge displayed.
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