In the obsession with AI, too many founders, leaders, managers seem to have forgotten that an engineer with motivation + drive + focus + AI >> hundreds of AI agents without any of those The best products and companies are built by people and teams like that, and will continue to be so Ask yourself, again, why the AI labs hire the best of the best (some of the most driven people in the industry; founders, CTOs etc) if people aren't making the differrence when everyone has access to similar tools already

I remember interviewing for Staff and Director eng levels at Uber, back in 2016 (when Uber was very in-demand as a place to work). Those hired all had "battle scars" about problems we were solving. Theory alone didn't cut it. I assume same will happen now: to get into "hot" AI-native companies, you'll need to have had "battle scars" solving similar problems that they struggle with. So this itself is already a very good reason to not buy vendor solutions for AI infra + intergations, but build it yourself. See how the sausage is built. Make the best eng decisions you can, and still get burnt. Eventually, as things stabilize, best practices are shaped, there will be less reason to do so... but those who built tomorrow's complex systems from scratch, today, will always have an advantage IMO