#3 - Robert Welch - Is AI Making Engineers Worse?

Aug 8, 2025
52 mins

Episode Description

Are AI tools making engineers worse—or just exposing who’s coasting?


Robert Welch (Chief Innovation Officer at APM Help) shares how his team ships zero-to-one products fast without letting AI erode core skills. We get into the guardrails that keep quality high (tests, CI/CD, enterprise privacy/no data retention), the difference between designing systems vs pasting code, and why AI should augment—not replace—judgment.

Plus: protecting yourself from scams, humanoid robots in property ops, and whether AI music can ever rival human craft.

 

Key topics

  • AI’s trade-off: speed vs. skill erosion

  • Guardrails that keep quality: tests, CI/CD, code review, metrics

  • Security & compliance in AI dev

 

Takeaways

  • Augment, don’t abdicate: think first, code second

  • Preserve craft: write tests, run reviews

  • Measure quality, not just speed: defects, rollbacks, coverage

  • Protect data and yourself: approved tooling, least-privilege, verify suspicious requests

 

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