The part of the job AI keeps missing

There was a moment, sometime in 2023, when I started to feel it. Not panic, but a kind of alertness. The articles were everywhere. AI replacing engineers, entire roles becoming obsolete overnight. And there I was, managing a team of them. I was never particularly worried. I've always believed that the human element in building software, the judgment, the relationships, the context that lives between people, isn't something that can be quietly absorbed by a model. But being confident isn't the same as being complacent. Something was shifting, and anyone not paying attention was going to be left behind. So I paid attention. The first thing I noticed wasn't that I had more time. It was that I had more headspace. When the routine information-gathering starts taking care of itself, you stop carrying it around. And when you stop carrying it around, you start noticing things you were too busy to notice before. A pattern in how the team is communicating. A tension that hasn't surfaced yet but