{"id":165623,"date":"2026-01-29T14:55:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T14:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/?p=165623"},"modified":"2026-01-29T14:55:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T14:55:57","slug":"the-ai-shift-from-engineering-efficiency-to-engineering-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/2026\/01\/29\/the-ai-shift-from-engineering-efficiency-to-engineering-empathy\/","title":{"rendered":"The AI shift from engineering efficiency to engineering empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ian Jeffs, UK&I Country General Manager, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group, says AI is redefining what makes a great engineer, pushing empathy, mentorship and human judgement to the forefront as organisations adapt to a human-plus-machine future.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI is not just transforming how engineering teams build and ship products, it is also redefining the very idea of what makes a \u2018good\u2019 engineer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In particular, the advent of AI coding assistants is driving a cultural shift within the industry and changing the way that talent is hired and developed. Engineering leaders are re-evaluating what makes teams effective and new skills are rising in importance and even eclipsing technical depth \u2013 mentorship, curiosity, emotional intelligence and most importantly empathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Empathy is becoming a core engineering skill<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impact of AI coding assistants is key to understanding this seismic shift in the technical talent landscape. These tools not only open new possibilities for engineering productivity, significantly accelerating software development, they are also forcing engineering leaders to rethink how they chart career paths, assess capabilities and build teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With machines becoming collaborative partners and increasingly resembling \u2018digital colleagues\u2019, engineers with empathy are increasingly valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Empathy empowers engineers to reshape relationships with both their human and digital colleagues and is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Empathy will also be increasingly valuable in a shifting workplace where reskilling will be the norm, as AI wreaks profound changes on the way organisations work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engineering leaders will need to rethink workforce strategies in a nuanced, human-focused way. Gartner has predicted that by 2027 the majority of the AI workforce (80%) will need reskilling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To stay relevant, today\u2019s engineers and engineering leaders need to focus on upskilling and reskilling to stay relevant. That means organisations will obviously value diversity in skills within their engineering talent pool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the differentiating factor that marks out \u2018great\u2019 engineers is no longer simply technical fluency, tool literacy and domain understanding. The best engineers are those who have all those virtues, with a healthy splash of human judgement and empathy thrown in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why over-indexing on automation risks de-humanising innovation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than operating alone, new talent must demonstrate that they can collaborate with intelligent systems, such as AI agents. This will be crucial to improving return on investment (ROI) from agentic AI, making decisions rooted in broader business and user contexts, creating personalised workflows and navigating ambiguity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smart organisations are hiring engineers to operate in a \u2018human-plus-machine\u2019 model, where intelligent, empathetic engineers decide when to trust the tools, when to override them and when to explore new paths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Automation is powerful, but innovation is always driven by human beings. Truly empathetic engineers will be key to delivering this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are already seeing a profound shift in companies across many regions, with organisations emphasising adaptability and cross-functional thinking above pure coding prowess. The empathy to make complex decisions involving other human workers and AI agents and applying AI tools intelligently in diverse business contexts is becoming the key factor that drives engineering success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How AI co-pilots are changing what great engineering leadership looks like<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great engineering leadership is changing. Organisations will not just need great tools and great technical engineers to use them. Organisations will need to take a full lifecycle approach to technology adoption, customising agents for engineering workflows and managing them responsibly at scale. Effective engineering leaders will be those who can ensure that engineering teams adapt to changes and thrive in this new \u2018human-plus-machine\u2019 model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, they will come armed with empathy, strategic thinking and the capability to be ethical technologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, they will see AI not as a shortcut or \u2018cheat mode\u2019 but as a partner driving long-term success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Successful engineering leaders will also be those who can deal with the risks associated with the democratisation of coding support and ensure that engineers are supported appropriately throughout their careers. For example, candidates may over-rely on AI tools in interviews or trial assignments, making it harder to grade or assess their foundational understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New hires must therefore go through live coding exercises and in-depth code walkthroughs to ensure that they are not over-relying on AI and that their thinking is sound, not just augmented. With some entry-level coding tasks becoming obsolete, new hires must demonstrate not only tool fluency and data acumen but also the ability to learn rapidly and the empathy to apply those skills within the organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rise of \u2018human fluency\u2019 as a new metric for tech team success<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this shifting landscape, tech team success depends on visionary leaders who understand their employees\u2019 skills and needs and can align them with the right technology tools across the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaders must champion \u2018human fluency\u2019 as a key metric for tech team success, adapting talent and workflows to bring out the full potential of technology. Engineers with the empathy to adapt rapidly to new working practices will be key to delivering this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Human fluency\u2019 also applies for more experienced engineers at the top of their game. Their value no longer lies solely in their deep knowledge of the technical side but in abstraction and orchestration. Routine code will increasingly be handled by machines, so experienced engineers can focus more on mentoring others, strategic design and integration across systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towards a more empathetic organisation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With top engineering talent no longer defined simply by their knowledge and proficiency with tools, organisations are already shifting towards new ways of hiring, training and retaining talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With AI agents now working like \u2018digital colleagues\u2019, the most important skills for engineers are understanding how human and agentic teams fit together, empowering human colleagues to work within that environment and taking on the very human job of driving innovation in an automated environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This shift will have profound implications for how organisations hire and develop employees, with \u2018human fluency\u2019 growing in importance even as organisations adopt more automation. The future of engineering is a very human, empathetic one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ian Jeffs, UK&I Country General Manager, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group, says AI is redefining what makes a great engineer, pushing empathy, mentorship and human judgement to the forefront as organisations adapt to a human-plus-machine future. AI is not just transforming how engineering teams build and ship products, it is also redefining the very idea of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":165624,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20673,7359,93],"tags":[24237,24236,23477,98,76,24238,24235,24234,15971,24233],"class_list":["post-165623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-expert-opinion","category-industry-expert","category-top-stories","tag-ai-coding-assistants","tag-ai-engineering","tag-ai-workforce","tag-data-centres","tag-digital-transformation","tag-empathetic-leadership","tag-engineering-leadership","tag-human-fluency","tag-lenovo-infrastructure-solutions-group","tag-reskilling-workforce"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165625,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165623\/revisions\/165625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}