Engineering Unblocked · 2025-09-12 · 49 min
In this episode, Michael Lopp shares what he's learned leading engineering teams at Slack, Pinterest, and Palantir - including why AI is delivering real but modest productivity gains, and why junior engineers churning out AI-generated code is probably slowing teams down. Michael Lopp (Rands) brings three decades of engineering leadership experience to the AI conversation - revealing why he thinks we're experiencing another bubble similar to the dotcom era, but moving much faster. He's bullish on the technology but realistic: AI enables 5-10% productivity gains for complex work, not the revolutionary changes some expect. His framework emphasizes that good leadership still requires empathy, one-on-ones, and actually listening to your team. Find the transcript at: (0:00) Introduction (2:45) Are we living in another dotcom bubble?
AI's unglamorous wins for developer productivity with Tara Hernandez from MongoDB75 / 100
What a year of hands-on AI coding teaches you about good software with Lada Kesseler
Being a CTO when everything is exploratory with Rob Zuber from CircleCI
Develop, deploy, operate: Three stages of delivering business value with Titus Winters from Adobe
How to hire normal engineers and help them do great work with Charity Majors from Honeycomb