Date & time

17:00

Engineering leaders are managing teams whose roles are evolving faster than ever. As AI changes the nature of engineering work, teams need greater clarity around priorities and trade-offs. The need for strong leaders to set and clearly communicate best practice has never been greater.

The skills that get you promoted to engineering leadership positions often aren’t the ones that help you when you get there. Senior engineers are making the lateral move into management without learning the fundamentals: resources must be secured, and board expectations managed, before engineering teams can get to work. Sustaining motivation through long dev cycles, job insecurity, and rapid tool turnover is what separates teams that ship well from those that burn out.

AI has made code-generation abundant. The durable leadership skills are the ones that have become scarce as a result: clear communication, building alignment, and inspiring trust. 

In this session, we bring together Stanford leadership communication expert Matt Vassar with others navigating the same shift. Participants will learn what effective communication looks like amid technological uncertainty, and practical strategies for developing it.

Key takeaways:

• The skills that become more valuable as coding becomes less scarce
• How to build and maintain team trust as AI reshapes engineering roles
• How to make technical reasoning understandable to non-technical colleagues