Twilio's Inbal Shani warns AI could undermine engineering skill development

Inbal Shani, Twilio’s chief product and technology officer, warned that artificial intelligence is beginning to handle routine coding work, which could erode the traditional learning path for junior engineers. She explained that historically, engineers gained expertise by grappling with architecture, edge cases, and debugging, but AI now enables users to produce code without that deep thinking. Shani recommends emphasizing systems engineering and allowing early-career engineers to run micro-experiments under senior guidance to develop cognitive muscle.

She also highlighted that AI changes where expertise must reside, requiring knowledgeable staff close to the code rather than a single specialist group. Shani criticized the use of adoption rates and seat counts as performance metrics, urging companies to measure engineers’ ability to justify design choices and the frequency of post-production fixes. Finally, she suggested hiring should value curiosity and the ability to interrogate AI output, noting that in five years human judgment will be the primary bottleneck.