The honeymoon phase of AI-driven productivity is meeting the harsh reality of system stability. Amazon has officially updated its internal policies to require senior engineers to sign-off for any code changes assisted by generative AI. This move follows a series of significant service disruptions—referred to internally as "high blast radius" incidents—where AI-generated code led to major product outages.

For a company that values speed and a "you build it, you run it" culture, this is a massive shift. It turns out that while AI can write code in seconds, the cost of an error at AWS scale can be measured in hours of downtime and millions in lost revenue. We are seeing a necessary correction: AI is a powerful assistant, but it cannot yet be trusted with the keys to the kingdom without a seasoned human expert verifying the logic.

🧠 Amazon now mandates senior review for all AI-assisted code deployments.
⚡ The policy change follows a spike in high-priority Sev2 incidents.
🎓 Senior engineers must now act as the ultimate "bar raisers" for synthetic code.
🔍 This internal friction highlights the hidden costs of AI-driven development.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/03/after-outages-amazon-to-make-senior-engineers-sign-off-on-ai-assisted-changes/
#EngineeringManagement #CloudComputing #GenerativeAI #security #privacy #cloud #infosec #cybersecurity

The Quality Coach's Handbook Course: Mastering the Quality Coach Role in Organisations by Anne-Marie Charrett is the featured course on Leanpub!

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Why Your CEO Acts Like a Clown: The Tribal Myths of Leadership, by @uxdesigncc:

https://archive.ph/mMMp5

#leadership #culture #engineeringmanagement

Don't Become an Engineering Manager

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#processes #engineeringmanagement #career

We need to talk about the cult of "staying current."

I often see teams pushing for major framework or library upgrades without being able to name a single friction point, security risk, or performance bottleneck they are actually solving. When asked for the "Why," the answer is usually a shrug: "It’s the latest version."

A thread 🧵

#WorkFeedbackLoop #SystemThinking #SoftwareEngineering #Actionism #TechDebt #EngineeringManagement

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