Back to First Principles: What Value Do You Provide?
Domain knowledge times AI productivity equals leverage. A failed interview and a production alert bot show why your judgment, not AI, sets the direction.
I once went to a job interview. When I reviewed it afterward, I noticed one thing. I did not know the business logic behind their code, so even with AI, I did not make much progress.
After that, I started to look at my value with one formula.
The leverage formula
Providing value is something no era can overturn. So I went back to first principles and asked myself three questions:
- Does the value I provided before still pay well today?
- Can I use AI to create value that helps both the company and me?
- Can I give value to other people too?
A real example
Later, I built a bot that handles production alerts. When an alert comes in, AI reads the logs, finds the cause, writes the report, and opens a fix. I make the judgment calls: is the cause right, and is the fix safe?
One time, the fix was merged less than two hours after the alert. That was not AI’s work alone. I know the system, so I know which of AI’s conclusions I can trust and which I must check again.
AI gives suggestions. Checking that a suggestion is correct is still your job. AI Code Is Already Correct, So Why Review? uses a database example to show why this judgment matters so much.
Domain knowledge sets the direction. AI sets the speed. Without direction, speed means nothing.
Related: next, read why correct AI code still needs review, see What Does AI Accelerate?, or go back to the series overview: Will AI Take My Job?