Justin Smestad

The strongest hiring signal isn’t the resume. It’s whether you are willing to make the repeated investment mentorship requires: context, feedback, hard conversations, and real curiosity about how someone thinks.

The ‘AI replaces junior engineers’ argument ignores basic economics. Junior employees aren’t just cheap labor. They’re salary insurance, pipeline protection, and the only hedge companies have against a senior workforce that increasingly doesn’t need the job.

The best engineers know how to read the room. This is not really an engineering problem, it’s a people problem. The engineers people trust most are the ones who know when to reassure, when to stay quiet, and how to make others feel understood.

Everyone assumes AI will replace most jobs within a year. The technology might be ready, but the economics aren’t. Data centers, power grids, and component costs don’t follow Moore’s Law. When demand outstrips infrastructure, token prices go up, and companies start doing the math on AI versus people.

AI makes ‘one more prompt’ irresistible. The next feature is always ten minutes away. The hardest engineering skill in the age of AI isn’t building. It’s deciding when to ship.