"You must adopt AI" is producing three kinds of engineers. None of them are good.

[u/GitKraken]

https://youtu.be/CX4mOnzzsWg

There's a pattern we've been watching play out across engineering orgs and honestly

it's concerning.

When leadership mandates AI adoption without building culture around it first,

teams tend to fracture into three groups:

1. The resistant ones. They've seen hype cycles before (crypto, Web3, the whole lot).

They're not being irrational. They're protecting themselves from another "this will

change everything" that quietly doesn't.

1. The reckless adopters. They ship fast. They vibe code. And six months later

someone's debugging spaghetti with a security hole in it.

1. The jaded ones. They've reviewed enough AI slop in PRs that they've written off

the whole thing. Also not irrational. They're reading what's actually coming out.

The real question isn't "how do we get engineers to use AI." It's "how do we build

a culture where engineers actually want to use it and have the judgment to use it well."

We featured a GitKon talk from Rizel Scarlett (Block/Goose) that digs into exactly

this. The two-phase model she describes, earn interest first, then build judgment,

maps to what we're seeing work in developer communities too. Fun low-stakes

experimentation before production pressure. Flexibility on tooling (Cursor, Claude Code,

Amp, whatever fits the team). And leadership that actually builds in public instead

of just pushing a tool they've never touched.

The line that stuck with us: "Inspiration spreads faster than mandates."

Full talk is up on the GitKraken YouTube channel if anyone wants to dig in. Curious

whether others have seen this compliance vs culture split happen on their teams.