Episode Summary
AI has the potential to amplify our skills, spark our creativity, and help us innovate faster than ever before—if we use it right.
In this episode of the Scaling Tech podcast, Arin sits down with Mike Todasco to discuss the use of AI in tech teams. Mike is a visiting fellow at San Diego State University’s Center for Artificial Intelligence and the former Senior Director of Innovation at PayPal. With a deep focus on AI and technology management, he brings a wealth of experience to the table. Mike holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and a Master of Fine Arts from Johns Hopkins, where he explored the intersection of AI and writing.
Drawing from his background in scaling innovation within large organizations, Mike shares actionable strategies for integrating AI tools into workflows, enhancing team productivity, and addressing the ethical and human aspects of scaling tech in software teams.
If you’re looking for resources on how you can use AI to unlock new levels of creativity and efficiency in your team, this is your episode. Tune in now to learn more!
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Key Insights are below
About Guest:
Name: Mike Todasco
What he does: He’s a Visiting Fellow at San Diego State University Center for Artificial Intelligence.
Company: San Diego State University
Where to find Mike: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡AI tools can amplify our creativity. Contrary to common fears, AI tools won’t necessarily replace humans or take over our jobs. Instead, they can serve a more inspiring purpose of expanding our capabilities. As Mike puts it, “They can do a decent job at writing. They can do a great job of brainstorming. They could do a pretty good job of editing. A wonderful feedback partner. But natively, these tools aren’t very creative. […] These are all still tools and they are very much tools that can make creative people more creative. And that’s really how I like to think about them and focus on them.”
⚡AI is accelerating innovation. AI tools are transforming how we approach innovation, making it faster and more accessible than ever. Mike explains, “I think it’s going to lead to more prototyping, more rapid iteration, more just like, ‘Okay, let’s just build four different versions of this because we couldn’t do that before, and let’s see what’s out there and just see which one’s going to stick, and then iterate and iterate and iterate.’ I think the concept of making MVPs, minimum viable prototypes for products, I think it’s just going to be quicker to get to that, and you’re going to be able to try and experiment so much more than you would have been able to do otherwise.”
⚡AI-first engineering teams are the future. As AI continues to shape the future of tech, its impact on engineering teams is becoming more profound. Mike explains, “We don’t even know what they’re capable of. The creator tools don’t know what they’re fully capable of. We’re discovering stuff. And especially for engineers, the act of discovery and finding new things and learning new things. This is the stuff that engineers thrive on. So, managers, just put in those constraints, and you are going to then see your team become not just an engineering team, but kind of an AI-first engineering team, and eventually that is what we’re all going to become.”
Episode Highlights
Uplevel your skills with AI
Is your team using AI already? If not, it’s time to get on board. AI can completely uplevel the way you work, enhancing your team’s capabilities and efficiency.
Mike puts it perfectly, “If you’re an engineering team today, look, if you’re not using these tools, you need to be. Full stop. And I think you just have to look at this as a way to completely uplevel everything that you’re doing. Use these things as agents. If you’re a junior engineer, you’re now potentially a manager because you have all these agents that could be doing this work and you’re kind of supervising the process and so forth. What I tell people who are getting CSS or engineering degrees, I think the value of knowing a language is probably going to be lessened than it was before. But the value of thinking like an engineer and knowing the process and knowing all of those things that are really important, really valuable, that is actually going to be heightened in the future.”
Engineering jobs are not disappearing; they’re evolving.
The rise of AI tools is all about transforming what’s possible for engineers. So, instead of fearing them, we should embrace them as opportunities to innovate. Mike says,
“Any engineering team out there always had a backlog, always had this backlog, all this crazy stuff like, ‘Maybe we’ll get to this someday.’ Here’s the thing. Maybe you actually start to get to those things. Maybe you start to try more. You can start to experiment more and get deeper into that versus just to have all of these things in the backlog, like, ‘We’ll push that up to 2025. That’s going to be 2026.’ You’re going to be able to potentially do that stuff now. And that is what’s really, really exciting. Again, engineering jobs are not going away. They are not going away. That is not going to change. But what an engineering job is, is going to evolve just as all jobs evolve.”
The power of AI lies in experimentation and play
When new tools like AI emerge, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed by them or hesitant before diving in. But their true potential lies in how we approach them—with curiosity, playfulness, and a willingness to learn through trial and error.
Mike says, “When I give presentations at school to students and so forth, what I say is, you all need to embrace your inner child. You need to just experiment. You just need to try stuff. You just need to know that you some of the stuff is going to fail, but just keep trying again and again and again. And all of a sudden, something is going to click, and you’re going to sound like, oh my gosh, this is magical. And that is truly what these tools can be for you. They are they are tools nonetheless. They are not artificial beings or anything like that you might be putting them up to be. They are tools for you to use that can help you so much, both professionally and personally.”