Thriving in Engineering

Alex Ponomarev

Software engineering isn't just strategy and sprint plans. It's ambiguity, pressure, trade-offs, and people. Thriving In Engineering helps you navigate all of it. In the newsletter, Alex Ponomarev distills 25 years of engineering leadership into practical frameworks to help you lead with confidence, stay calm under pressure, and build thriving teams. The podcast goes deeper, talking to engineers, leaders, and builders across the industry about what AI transformation actually looks like in practice, past the headlines and hype. One guest at a time.

Episodes

  1. Sep 22

    Why Metacognition Beats Coding Skill in the AI Era, with Carol Palombini

    Carol Palombini is a Leadership & Culture Consultant specializing in the human side of AI adoption. A psychologist, former Head of HR, and executive coach with extensive experience working with technology leaders, she helps organizations assess whether their leaders, people, and culture are ready for AI-driven change. Her work brings leadership readiness, psychological safety, workforce attitudes, and burnout risk into AI adoption strategy, helping organizations create the conditions for AI to move from experimentation to sustainable adoption. This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype. In this conversation, we discuss: Why AI adoption resistance is an influence problem, not a technical oneThe two types of leaders AI disruption is creatingWhy a three-year AI vision is impossible for AI adoptionWhy metacognition is becoming engineers' most valuable skillWhy measuring AI adoption by tokens burned backfiresCarol's details: Website: https://www.carolpalombini.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolpalombini/Substack: https://carolpalombini.substack.com/

    Why Metacognition Beats Coding Skill in the AI Era, with Carol Palombini

  2. Sep 8

    Don't Outsource Your Thinking to AI, with Michał Poczwardowski

    Michał Poczwardowski is a Staff Engineering Manager with over a decade of combined engineering, leadership, and management experience, and the founder of Perspectiveship, a newsletter on timeless leadership and communication skills. He mentors software leaders in decision-making and problem-solving. This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype. In this conversation, we discuss: Why AI writing sounds the same, and why only your own stories make it worth readingWhy outsourcing every decision to AI is like a runner who stops trainingThe €1,000 fake course he built on April Fool's Day as a honeypot for AI agentsHow he uses an Activity Watch MCP server to get a daily AI-generated focus reportWhat a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat taught him about detaching from stressMichał's details:Perspectiveship: https://read.perspectiveship.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/poczwardowski/

    Don't Outsource Your Thinking to AI, with Michał Poczwardowski

  3. Aug 25

    Why She Stopped Waiting for Permission to Build, with Elena Calvillo

    Elena Calvillo is an independent product builder based in Mexico City. After more than a decade in enterprise product management, she went independent in January 2026 and now builds her own products full time, including DraftKit, an async writing workspace for Substack creators. She writes Prompt-Led Product on Substack, where she teaches product managers how to build with AI instead of just talking about it. This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype. In this conversation, we discuss: Why she stopped waiting for permission to build and went independent with no team and no engineersHow the AI Advent Challenge grew into a community of almost 900 people with 200 learning dailyWhy she scrapped the calendar-first version of DraftKit after listening to what writers actually wantedHow she built an MCP protocol that lets paid subscribers search her entire prompt library from ClaudeWhy she treats user feedback as neutral information instead of praise or criticismElena's details:Prompt-Led Product: https://promptledproduct.substack.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-product-manager/DraftKit: https://draftkit.appAI Advent Challenge: https://aiadventchallenge.com

    Why She Stopped Waiting for Permission to Build, with Elena Calvillo

  4. Aug 11

    Why Non-Technical People Are Better at AI Than They Think, with Alyssa Fu Ward, PhD

    Alyssa Fu Ward is a data science leader and executive coach with a PhD in behavioral science from Stanford. She has worked at companies including Meta and Twitter, and now coaches professionals navigating AI-driven change in their work and identity. She writes Step Up Step Together, a newsletter on technology, work, and what she calls "how to human." This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype. In this conversation, we discuss:1: The Human-Centered AI Capability Framework: two dimensions crossed to map where you actually are with AI against where you want to go2: Why "build with AI" means something completely different for an engineer than for a marketer or an accountant3: Her case for why humans won't be replaced by AI, but will hit a shared limit alongside it4: The energy test she uses to decide what to automate and what to protect5: Open Room, her open source project teaching non-technical people, especially women, to build together with AI Alyssa’s details:Step Up Step Together Newsletter: https://alyssafuward.substack.com/The Hart Studio Newsletter: https://thehartstudio.substack.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssafuward/Website: https://alyssafuward.com/Open Room: https://open-room-open-source.vercel.app/You Are Already Technical Enough: alyssafuward.substack.com/p/you-are-already-technical-enough

    Why Non-Technical People Are Better at AI Than They Think, with Alyssa Fu Ward, PhD

  5. Jul 28

    The Green Status That Isn't True, with Michi Goetz

    Michi Goetz is the Director of Technical Program Management at Celonis, and he writes TPM Breakdowns, a Substack on the realities of program management. In this conversation, we discuss: 1: Why status reports turn red two days before launch, and why calling it red early is a gift, not a failure2: What his survey of 250 TPMs revealed about where AI adoption actually stands3: Why bad underlying data breaks AI's usefulness before it even starts4: His "TPM boardroom" method for pressure-testing decisions with AI personas before a meeting5: The three stages he sees TPMs moving through, ending in what he calls an "AI architect"6: His weekly voice-note practice for building a personal decision record Michi’s details:TPM Breakdowns Newsletter: https://michigoetz.substack.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michi-goetz/

    The Green Status That Isn't True, with Michi Goetz

  6. Jul 21

    The Builder PM: Why AI Is Pulling PMs Back Into Engineering, with Amy Mitchell

    Amy Mitchell is a Product Manager who started her career writing code and leading an engineering team before a lateral move pushed her into product. She writes Product Management IRL, a newsletter where she shares what she's learning as AI reshapes the job, including a term she's been using lately: the "builder PM," product managers stepping back into code, sales conversations, and go-to-market decisions all at once. In this conversation, we discuss: 1: Why moving from leading engineers to leading product managers meant trading precision for a stack of maybes2: The "builder PM" shift, and why AI is pulling product people back toward engineering work3: A support document that closed a deal when the spec sheet couldn't, and what it taught her about what customers actually value4: How she uses AI to understand a customer's day to day before a single feature gets written5: Her read on where product and engineering roles land once the current collision between them settles Amy's details: Product Management IRL newsletter - https://amycmitchell.substack.com/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycmitchell/Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/amycmitchell.bsky.social

    The Builder PM: Why AI Is Pulling PMs Back Into Engineering, with Amy Mitchell

  7. Jul 7

    Empathy Is Your Differentiator: Why AI Doesn't Replace Human Skills, with Colette Molteni

    Colette Molteni works in data analytics and AI governance inside a major tech company, where her job has shifted in the last six months from building dashboards and presenting to leadership to building the AI agents that do that work instead. She also writes Empathy Elevated, a newsletter on human skills for tech professionals, and has a decade of experience watching organizations bolt AI onto broken processes and wonder why it doesn't work. In this conversation, we discuss: Why slapping an AI agent on a broken process is like hiring an intern with no onboarding — and what to fix firstThe 80% problem: why AI gets most of a task right, but the last stretch still needs a human — true for code and dashboards alikeWhether empathy skills transfer to working with AI agents — and why a calm, clear communication style gets better resultsHow AI note-takers are quietly letting people zone out in meetings — and why that's a trust problemWhy team politics don't get smaller as teams get smaller — they just change shapeHer actual prediction on the AI transformation timeline — and why she doesn't buy the four-hour workday by 2027Colette's details:Empathy Elevated Newsletter - https://empathyelevated.substack.com/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colettemolteni/

    Empathy Is Your Differentiator: Why AI Doesn't Replace Human Skills, with Colette Molteni

  8. Jul 7

    Building on a Swamp: Why AI Doesn't Fix a Broken Dev Process, with Roman Nikolaev

    Roman Nikolaev is Head of Technology at Cambri, a Nordic research tech company whose AI-first platform helps global brands like Nestlé and Coca-Cola test product concepts before launch. He's also the author of High Impact Engineering, a Substack newsletter on practical, field-tested guidance for engineering leaders. Roman has been building and scaling software teams for over 20 years — and Cambri started working with AI and ML well before the ChatGPT moment made it mainstream. In this conversation, we discuss: Why 65% AI tooling adoption only produced 10% more PR throughput — and what the GetDx data actually tells usThe "building on a swamp" problem: why applying AI on top of a broken development process gives you almost no upsideWhether the software engineering profession is going away — and the car mechanic analogy that reframes the questionHow Cambry is running semi-automated agent workflows right now, with agents picking up tickets, asking questions, and raising PRsMCP servers worth paying attention to: Figma, Chrome/Chromium, and what Roman would actually build with themWhy every engineer is now effectively a manager — and the two constraints that stop anyone from being a one-person companyRoman's Details:High Impact Engineering newsletter - https://highimpactengineering.substack.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roman-nikolaev-43465019/

    Building on a Swamp: Why AI Doesn't Fix a Broken Dev Process, with Roman Nikolaev

  9. Jun 30

    Mastering AI Integration in Engineering Teams: Strategies from Shamim Rajani

    Shamim Rajani is COO and co-founder of Genetech, a software development company with 100+ people and offices in Karachi and Detroit serving clients across North America and Europe. She's also co-founder of Code Girls, a bootcamp that has trained over 2,000 women in Pakistan's tech industry, former chairperson of PASHA — Pakistan's national IT industry association — and writes The Leadership Lens, a Substack on the harder, less-talked-about side of leading teams. In this conversation, we discuss: Why Genetech built an internal AI research lab a year before they expected results from it — and what that patience bought themThe mid-level developer problem: why this layer is the most endangered, and what juniors and seniors each bring that AI can't replaceThe productivity paradox — how AI can turn a 100-hour task into a 130-hour one, and when seniors decide it's faster to scrap the output and do it themselvesHow small and medium business clients are using "aren't you using AI?" as a bargaining chip — without really understanding what they're askingShamim's real experiment: reviewing the same code manually and with AI, what each caught, and what she learned about where to trust itWhy she's comparing AI to the blockchain bubble — and why she changed her mind Genetech Solutions - https://www.genetechsolutions.com/  The Leadership Lens newsletter - https://shamimrajani.substack.com/  LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/shamimrajani Twitter - https://twitter.com/shamimrajani

    Mastering AI Integration in Engineering Teams: Strategies from Shamim Rajani
  • 9 Episodes

About

Software engineering isn't just strategy and sprint plans. It's ambiguity, pressure, trade-offs, and people. Thriving In Engineering helps you navigate all of it. In the newsletter, Alex Ponomarev distills 25 years of engineering leadership into practical frameworks to help you lead with confidence, stay calm under pressure, and build thriving teams. The podcast goes deeper, talking to engineers, leaders, and builders across the industry about what AI transformation actually looks like in practice, past the headlines and hype. One guest at a time.

Information

  • Creator
    Alex Ponomarev
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    9
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © We Are Volt Co.
  • Show Website
    Thriving in Engineering