How to Learn AI Engineering: Why You Should Start Without Frameworks
Are you learning AI engineering by starting with a framework? Here’s the advice I gave a data engineer this week. It probably applies to you too. I’ll call him Sameer. 3+ years of building data pipelines at a large insurance company, now moving into AI engineering. He asked me a simple question: what should my […]
Data Engineer to AI Engineer: Why Now Is the Time to Make the Move
Are you a data engineer watching AI do your job in minutes? Here’s why one engineer I spoke with is moving into AI engineering now — not in three years. I’ll call him Sameer. Data engineer at a large insurance company, 3+ years of building production pipelines. Python, SQL, Databricks, AWS, Snowflake. Six months ago, […]
Why Software Engineers Should Learn AI Engineering Now
I spoke with a software engineer whose company is being sold in 12 to 18 months. Here’s why he’s building AI engineering skills now, while his job is still safe. Call him Marcus. A few months ago he tried to build something with RAG, and in his words: “I realized I didn’t know what I […]
AI Is Advancing Too Fast. Good.
“AI is advancing too fast. How do I stay relevant?” Senior Engineers ask me this question every week. My answer: CHANGE = GOOD. Without change you would struggle to stand out. Look at accounting — that profession has been established for centuries (literally, modern accounting started in the 1800s). It’s so structured that in order […]
No, You’re Not Too Late to AI Engineering
The world needs millions of AI engineers. It barely has any. So why does everyone feel like they’re already too late? A developer I spoke with this week, Farah, gave me the sharpest answer I’ve heard. Her argument, roughly: AI engineering is a brand-new field. It didn’t really exist until 2022. People didn’t take it […]
Ask for the Shortcut
The most self-reliant engineer I met this year is also one of the most stuck. That’s not a coincidence. Tony has 25 years of experience. Principal engineer at a top consulting firm. Every AI skill you’d want — RAG, agents, graph and vector databases, the lot. And he’s stuck. Wrong job offers, no clarity on […]
Why I teach Python before LangChain
Anyone can wire together an AI agent with a framework in an afternoon. Almost none of them can fix it when it breaks. When I design how people learn AI engineering, I make a choice that frustrates some of them at first: we start with first principles in plain Python. Before LangChain. Before the agent […]
Why You’re Learning AI Slowly (And 3 Ways to Fix It)
I’ve watched hundreds of people learn AI engineering. The ones who break through always have the same three things — and none of them is talent. Progress in this field is rarely steady. Most people plateau for months, then suddenly leap (or don’t…). When I look at who’s leaping, the same three ingredients show up […]
How AI Skills Close a $100k Engineering Pay Gap
Anita (name changed for privacy) is one of the sharpest engineers I’ve spoken to lately. She’s also quietly underpaid — and she knows it. We got talking about money. She earns around $200k. Solid, on paper. But for her level, the market pays closer to $300k. She’s known this for months. She’s still in the […]
I burned 90% of my best-AI access on purpose
I pushed my usage of the world’s most powerful AI model to 90% this week — on purpose. Because today, it leaves my subscription. For a short window, Fable 5 (the most capable model available) was included in the Claude plan. As of today it moves to usage-based pricing, because demand is outpacing what Anthropic […]