CTO Craft Bytes: Don’t Humanise the Machine. Don’t Mechanise the Human.

AI promises faster delivery, leaner teams and greater productivity, but engineering leadership has always been about more than output alone.

In this CTO Craft Bytes session, Hywel Carver, CEO and Co-founder of Skiller Whale, joins Founder of The Leading Place Michelle McDaid to explore what engineering leadership looks like when AI becomes embedded in every stage of the development lifecycle.

Together, they’ll discuss:

• Which responsibilities should remain firmly in human hands, regardless of advances in AI

• What it actually means to move from adopting AI tools to building an AI-first engineering organisation

• How AI is changing expectations around team structure, hiring and organisational design

• Whether productivity gains should change how we measure engineering success

• How to preserve coaching, mentorship and culture in increasingly AI-driven teams

Join us for a practical discussion on balancing efficiency, leadership and the human side of software engineering in the age of AI.