DevOps Engineer of 10 Years Shares How a Manager's Advice Reshaped His View on AI

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A DevOps engineer with a decade of experience had been quietly worried that his growing reliance on AI tools was eroding the hard-won skills he had built over years of hands-on work. At an annual company conference dinner, he raised this concern directly with his engineering manager, Naveed Sanghera. Sanghera advised him to treat AI as a tool rather than a crutch, comparing it to how architects use CAD software without losing their core design expertise. The engineer subsequently restructured his workflow to use AI for initial drafts while applying his own experience to review, verify, and improve every output. He now argues that the real value of deep technical knowledge lies not in memorising commands, but in critically evaluating and refining what AI produces.

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