AI Is Changing How Engineers Actually Work

AI Is Changing How Engineers Actually Work

From The Tech Trek by Elevano

May 18, 2026 · 26 min · Episode 668

About this episode

Scott Breitenother discusses the impact of AI on engineering workflows and team dynamics.

AI coding tools are not just changing how software gets written. They are changing how teams work, how engineers are evaluated, and where bottlenecks show up. Scott Breitenother, CEO and cofounder of Kilo, joins The Tech Trek to talk about what engineering looks like when developers are managing multiple agents, work continues overnight, and the real constraint is no longer typing code, but judgment, ownership, and process design. Scott shares how Kilo uses Kilo to build its own product, why AI only creates speed when companies rethink their workflows, and how teams can build trust in agent generated code without creating a new layer of busywork. Practical Takeaways • AI does not automatically make teams faster. If approvals, meetings, and handoffs stay the same, the bottlenecks simply move. • Engineers using coding agents still own the outcome. AI can assist with the work, but accountability for quality does not disappear. • The strongest teams will find a middle ground between blindly accepting AI output and reviewing every line as if nothing changed. • Agentic engineering may feel novel now, but Scott believes it will eventually just be called engineering. • Always on agents…

People in this episode

Host: Elevano

Guest: Scott Breitenother

Topics covered

  • AI in engineering
  • software development
  • team dynamics
  • coding tools
  • workflow optimization

Keywords

  • AI coding tools
  • engineering
  • teamwork
  • productivity
  • accountability

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Kilo, Elevano

More episodes of The Tech Trek

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Tech Trek podcast page.