Curious but sceptical: exploring AI as an engineering manager

In this episode of Leading with Engineering Management, Simon Tomes talks with Neil Younger about his experiments using AI to support himself as a leader, rather than to help with software development. Neil explains how he came to the topic through curiosity and a healthy dose of scepticism carried over from his testing background, how he weighs the data and ethical questions that come with it, and how he keeps his own data protected.

He walks through where he started, from simple text generation and summarising, to dictating thoughts on a walk and letting an agent structure them into useful notes, and how he personalises his agents with his values and principles so the output feels more like him.

The conversation then moves into the specific agents Neil relies on: a decision agent loaded with frameworks that acts as a kind of extended rubber ducking, a research agent grounded in academic sources with its own test suite, and a communication agent that critiques his drafts before they go out. 

Throughout, Neil returns to a guardrails-first approach, putting as much work into stopping an agent from misbehaving as into making it do the job, and to a line he will not cross, that AI can support his thinking but should never replace human-to-human connection as a manager. He also shares how tailoring meeting summaries to the type of meeting produces richer output, and why the best tools are sometimes the ones you retire once they have helped you improve.

The pair close by looking ahead to the in-person Engineering Management Chapter workshop at MoTaCon.

Chapter timestamps

00:19 AI Experiments In Leadership
03:02 Skepticism And Curiosity In Tech
05:06 Data Privacy And Ethical Implications
07:00 Early AI Tooling Experiences
11:28 Voice Dictation For Thought Structuring
14:57 Personalising Agents With Values
18:00 Decision Making Framework Agents
20:00 Structured Academic Research Agents
22:51 Implementing AI Guardrails
25:40 Maintaining Human Connections
28:41 Tailored Meeting Summarisation Skills
31:03 Communication Skill Refinement Agents

🚀 Grow your career with the MoTaverse, join the Engineering Management Chapter.