Welcome to Navigating the AI Shift! We're glad you're here.

The Tools Changed Overnight

The tools changed overnight. The job description and expectations are still catching up.

This isn't just a skills gap. It's an identity threat. All the skills you've worked to build are being publicly devalued to bolster stock prices, and it's unclear how much of that is real. The advice to just start using AI skips over the part where you have to work through what you're losing — and how to catch up when you feel like you're already behind.

With the industry feeling more pressured and competitive than ever, it's hard to find a safe space to experiment and learn. This course is designed to be that space.

What This Course Is Really About

Most AI content is hype, overly prescriptive, individualistic, and missing the emotional challenges and the threat. This course helps you shift from reading and worrying (or both) to actually getting shit done — and understanding how to apply that in your current situation, whatever that looks like.

The project is the core of this course. Greenfield projects are the lowest-stakes way to build experience. You'll build something that's yours, develop real judgment about what AI produces and what it misses, and leave with a strong starting point for your own workflows.

Whilst individuals report gains from AI usage, organisations are reporting more impact on costs than output. Individual fluency is only part of the equation — productivity is a collective endeavour. That's why the course ends by bringing what you've learned back to your team.

How This Course Is Structured

The four modules build on each other, moving from mindset through to practice and back out to impact:

Module 1 — Navigating the Identity Threat: You can't build new skills from a place of threat. Before you can move forward, you need to work through the mindset shift. This module addresses the identity challenge head-on, helps you find value in the skills you've built beyond writing code, and introduces the distinction between slop and productivity.

Module 2 — Your Project, Part 1: In this module you'll find something you actually want to build, scope it down, and ship an MVP. It's hard to build AI fluency at work — too many constraints, too much pressure to ship, and no room to be bad at something new. A personal project gives you that room — space to experiment, to be a beginner, and to let curiosity back in. You'll leave with something real, and with the experience of having worked through the discomfort instead of around it.

Module 3 — Your Project, Part 2: Module 2 was about getting something running. This module is about going deeper — and about developing the habits that make AI actually useful at scale. We'll cover what makes AI useful and what doesn't, the guardrails that matter more as projects grow, and feedback as the mechanism for improvement. If you're behind, use this module to catch up. If you're on track, use it to go further.

Module 4 — Bringing It Back to Your Team: You've built something real. This module closes two loops: what's actually shifted since Module 1, and how you bring what you've learned back to the people around you. We'll look at why individual AI fluency doesn't automatically transfer to teams, what actually moves the needle at team scale, and how to build the kind of learning culture that supports adaptation.

Meet your instructors

Jean Hsu is a builder, writer, coach, and fractional engineering leader at early-stage startups. She was previously in leadership roles at Pulse, Medium, and Range, and also built out a leadership development company focused on engineers. She lives in Berkeley with her partner and three kids.

Cate Huston is the author of The Engineering Leader, fractional CTO at Twill, and engineering leadership coach. She was previously in leadership roles at DuckDuckGo and Automattic, and an advisor at Glowforge. She has been all over the world, but now lives in Ireland.

We built this course because we've both been navigating the AI shift ourselves — and found that the most valuable thing wasn't reading yet another article about a workflow that will have changed next month, but having a safe space to experiment, be a beginner, and develop real opinions based on the work we actually need to get done.

How to engage with each module

Modules are released on a schedule to give you time to absorb and reflect. You'll receive an email when each new module becomes available.

Read first. Start with the written content to understand the frameworks and concepts.

Listen to the audio. After reading, listen to the conversation between Jean and Cate. We explore the themes in more depth, share examples from our own experiences, and discuss nuances that don't always fit in the written material. You can download the audio to listen while walking, commuting, or doing other activities.

Do the exercises. The real work happens in the exercises. They're designed to help you clarify your thinking, identify patterns, and take concrete action. The more you put in, the more you'll get out.

Working with your coaches

You'll complete each module's exercises in a Google Doc workbook. Make a copy of each module's Google Doc for your own responses. Once you've finished the exercises for a module, submit your workbook here for feedback.

As your coaches, we will:

• Read your reflections and responses
• Provide personalized feedback and insights
• Ask follow-up questions to help you go deeper
• Suggest concrete next steps where relevant

How to get the most out of this course

• Block out time. We recommend at least 60 minutes a week and keeping up with the module deadlines. Give yourself dedicated time to think, write, and process.

• Be honest. The exercises work best when you're candid with yourself — unpolished and rough beats polished and safe. We're not grading you. We're reading to understand where you are and what would actually be useful.

• Take the project seriously. Modules 2 and 3 are structured around building something. The instincts you're developing — what AI is actually good for, where your judgment matters, what "good enough" looks like — come from doing, not reading.

• Reach out if you're stuck. If something doesn't make sense or you're struggling with an exercise, reply to any course email and we'll reply promptly.

Slack Community

We've set up a Slack community for course participants to introduce themselves, connect, and self-organize any support you might want from each other. Keep an eye out for an invite close to the course start date.

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We're really looking forward to working with you over the coming weeks. Navigating the AI shift can feel isolating — especially when the public conversation is all wins and no struggles. You're not alone in this. We've both been navigating it ourselves, and that's exactly why we built this course.

See you in Module 1.

— Jean and Cate