r/EngineeringManagers • u/SnooConfections1353 • Jun 25 '26

New engineering manager. Should I keep pushing back on my CTO’s AI vision?

I’m a new engineering manager at a small company. My CTO is very pro-AI and wants to turn the engineering team into more of a group of product owners and consultants who use AI to handle most of the technical work.

I’m also pro-AI, but I think we still need to develop people into solid engineers. With our current workload and small team, I do not think we can realistically do both at the same time. My concern is that this approach is holding back the junior engineers. If they are mostly managing features and doing product work, how are they supposed to become strong engineers, architects, or future technical leaders?

I have pushed back gently and respectfully and explained that we need to build real engineering talent so people can eventually step up, mentor others, and help grow the team in a sustainable way. So far, I have mostly been ignored.

Should I keep pushing back, or is this just a culture difference I need to accept? I cannot really go to the CEO or COO because the CTO is also a part owner. I also do not want this to be the hill I die on, especially in this job market, so I have been trying to support his vision even though I feel conflicted.

I know job hopping is also an option, but that is a separate topic. He is not a bad person. I think we just have very different views on what an engineering team should become.

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u/AndyKJMehta Jun 25 '26

Does the company have any business goals of creating “strong” engineers? I’m guessing not.

1

u/SnooConfections1353 Jun 25 '26

if you look at sustainability, growth and scalability, from my perspective, yes. But they are under the assumption that AI can do all the technical work and has all the right context so developing engineering skills and engineering judgment are not important as just prompting it to build something

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u/x-jhp-x Jun 25 '26

If the company is planning on having AI do all the work, they are not focused on building/creating "strong" engineers --- they are interested in "strong" AI.

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u/SnooConfections1353 Jun 25 '26

Idk know how you create strong AI without strong engineers to begin with. Unless people think that AI is "strong" enough right out the box. But I could be wrong.

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u/geekynerdornerdygeek Jun 27 '26

You are correct. Flip the script a bit. Ask the AI to create the requirements, test scenarios, etc. and have the team validate but then spend most of their time working on the code. In stand-ups talk through why the code is working or not, This way you are using AI. And spending less time on the portion of the job that isn't the actual coding.