Your exec promised a customer that AI would 'just know' the answer to any question across every database in the org. It won't. AI is a model of reality — and there's always a gap. The question is whether you know what it is.
The Highest Paid Person's Opinion isn't always wrong — but it needs a reality check from the people who actually build things. The best organisations make space for 'cool idea, but here's how that actually works.'
Tiny Jira tickets. Daily check-ins. Hand-holding. Scrum built the perfect assembly line — and AI loves assembly lines. The question isn't whether AI can do the tickets. It's whether your team is more than the sum of its tickets.
The 'missionaries vs mercenaries' framing is lazy and wrong. After 30 years of freelancing, I've seen full-timers who don't care and contractors who bleed for the outcome. It's not about employment status — it's about who gives a damn.
AI-enabled revenue feels a lot like tulip bulbs in 1637. Everyone's hoarding data by the petabyte, hoping it'll bloom into gold. But most of it's weeds — and the only ones smiling are the lads selling shovels.