Note: I used AI to help organize my thoughts and draft this post, which I then heavily edited.
Both AI skeptics and AI overhypers are wrong, and equally dangerous to productivity.
The skeptics who insist on abstaining from AI tools because they think it’s all hype without real value are just as dangerous as the people claiming AI will replace all our jobs this year. Neither extreme reflects reality. AI tools are powerful and can dramatically accelerate your work, but they are tools nonetheless.
And yet, even though most of us have started embracing these tools and know they work, there's this weird stigma that's emerged around actually talking about using them.
There's this unspoken shame I’ve both felt and observed about sharing your AI usage openly. When an agentic coding tool handles 95% of the implementation for you, there's a nagging voice that whispers, "This is cheating." When you ask Claude to help draft a tricky message, the mind goes: if people know I do this, will they think I'm lazy? Replaceable?
This is backwards.
When you tell your manager or peers that you're using AI tools extensively, what they should hear is: "I'm finding ways to move faster than ever before." Not: "I'm cutting corners" or "my skills are declining."
The real unlock happens when we collectively embrace openness about our AI workflows. When people start sharing:
everyone benefits, and velocity compounds across the team.
As an engineering leader, I really felt this tension. For the longest time, I was hesitant to communicate how extensively I was using AI tools, even as I desperately wanted my team to experiment with them. I could see the value these tools provided when used thoughtfully, but I worried about the optics.
The contradiction was exhausting: wanting others to get excited about the tools while being shy about my own usage. So I’ve decided to get over it.
My hypothesis is that being open creates permission for others. When engineers see their manager is "all in" on agentic workflows, they feel comfortable being all in too. They start sharing their own discoveries and get inspired by workflows they hadn't considered.
If you're in a group where people are skeptical about AI tools, or where people use them quietly but never talk about them openly, you have an opportunity. Break that pattern and be the one who demonstrates that openness about AI usage is not just acceptable, but valuable.
Share your workflows, talk about what works and what doesn't, and discuss the tools you're using and how they are helpful.
The upside is enormous: you'll inspire others to experiment, you'll learn from their discoveries, and collectively you'll all move faster than you ever could in isolation.
Getting over AI shame isn't just about personal liberation, it's also about benefiting everyone around you.
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