Today's guest is James Stanier, CTO at Nordhealth, former director at Shopify, an author of several books about engineering management, remote work, and more.

With James, we talked about what senior engineers will look like in the future, taking from a great article he wrote just recently, and then regarding how engineering management is changing, what's expected of managers today, and what you need to thrive.

We also talked about AI adoption in his team, in our personal respective lives, and discussed the state of remote work in 2026.

(00:00) Episode start

(01:25) Introduction

(02:05) Senior engineers in 2035

(05:11) Sponsor break

(06:45) Level of abstraction: from compilers to AI

(10:17) Excited engineers and worried engineers

(12:44) The bifurcation: vibe coders vs platform engineers

(16:51) Engineering managing role changes

(23:21) Managing time with expanding roles

(28:32) Are hierarchies flattening?

(36:25) AI adoption in James' team

(41:27) What's hard in the AI era

(44:36) AI as a personal assistant

(50:05) Remote work in 2026

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Today's episode is brought to you by Unblocked.

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You can also find this at:

• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm

• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw

• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305

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For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]