AI spend is getting a lot of attention. But tokens are a rounding error next to engineering salaries. Mike Stahnke joins Uplevel to tackle a bigger question: what are we getting for the money we spend on engineering?
Watch the full conversation as we get into token spend, engineering ROI, product/engineering ownership, code review, experimentation, backlogs, and the bottlenecks AI is creating downstream.
45
Minutes
Watch now:
What we discussed:
How did you measure value before AI?
If you're trying to maximize value per token, start here. We get into the real measures of value: revenue, adoption, engineering investment, and whether the work actually reaches the customer.
Stop "rubbing AI on it"
Add AI to the way you already develop software and you'll get modest gains. The bigger unlock comes when you maximize how AI changes the economics of experimentation.
What has to be true for AI to accelerate delivery
If writing code is where an engineer's responsibility ends, you're moving the bottleneck without delivering more value. The orgs getting the most from AI are rethinking the whole path from idea to customer — not just the part where code gets written.
Mike Stahnke
VP Engineering, Fly.io Co-author, DORA State of DevOps Report (2018-2021)
Amy Carrillo Cotten
Director of Client Transformation, Uplevel
MC Johansen
Executive Transformation Consultant, Uplevel
ex-Docker & CircleCI
This webinar is for engineering leaders who:
Are getting asked, “What are we getting for all this AI spend?”
Have engineers shipping more code but aren't seeing the same jump in customer value.
Need to explain engineering's value to the CFO and the rest of the executive team.
Know the org has a pipeline, but aren't sure if it has a practice.
.png)
