When I walk into a new team, I usually expect some skepticism. Fair enough — every company has its own scars. But this group took it to a whole new level.
They hadn’t touched AI coding tools. Not once. Instead, they had memorized every criticism they could find:
Hallucinations!
Context windows!
And, wait for it… hallucinations again.
Here’s the thing: parroting the limitations is easy. Using the tools well is harder. So instead of lecturing, I set up a sandbox: try it, explore, report back. Some did. Some didn’t.
Then I hosted office hours. I shared my screen, showed my own messy process, and let them watch me succeed (and fail) in real time. One engineer told me he’d just wasted two hours chasing a dead end with AI. He looked frustrated but curious. I asked him to keep going.
He did. Another two hours later, he had a working solution that was better quality than what he’d normally ship.
I asked: “So you wasted three hours?”
He immediately leaned back, laughed and said: “Don’t ask me that. This just saved me weeks.”
That’s the shift. AI isn’t magic. It frustrates you. It wastes your time. But if you lean in, learn the strategies, and persist, the payoff is leverage you can’t ignore.
👉 I train engineering teams to cross that bridge faster — from eye-rolling skeptics to productive adopters. If your team is stuck spinning its wheels, let’s talk. heavychain.org