GoKawiilAt a CTO Craft Dinner in Toronto, I sat down with engineering leaders from more than a dozen tech companies and asked where AI has actually landed. The free-for-all is over and we need to be realistic.
Our Shift CTO Craft Dinner format is built on candor, rather than slides or sponsor pitches. It’s just a group of senior engineering leaders talking about what’s actually happening in their organizations. At our Toronto dinner held on the outskirts of the CTO Craft conference, the theme was AI adoption in engineering
Within the first 5 minutes it was clear we’d spend the evening confirming one uncomfortable truth, similar to the one we heard earlier this spring in London: nobody has truly yet figured it out.
Note: We’ll try to figure it out at our Shift developer conference in September on the beautiful Croatian coast – tickets are on sale!
The free-for-all is over
Two years ago, the mandate was simple: spend on AI, no questions asked. That era is over.
What’s replaced it is a harder conversation, one several participants had clearly been having with their CFOs. The question has shifted from are you using AI to what are you getting for it?
The need for an ROI hasn’t changed. If anything, that window of just spending freely is dwindling. For larger organizations, the expectation is return within 12 months, or sooner.
The challenge, as one participant put it, is that the I in ROI is completely unmanaged. Engineering capacity used to mean headcount, something finance could model. Now it means tokens, and nobody controls how many tokens any individual engineer burns on a given day.
The CFO has no control once they’ve signed the contract over what the actual investment is going to be. And if you can’t tell me the investment, what does projected return even mean?
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