← All coursesCourse N° 03 / Navigating the AI Shift

The tools change. Your career continues.

Navigating the AI Shift.

From anxious and reactive to genuinely capable and intentional about how you use AI. Build real fluency — without the hype.

Starts June 8, 20268 weeks · async~60 min / weekFrom $449

Enroll now See the curriculum

Illustration of a dizzy raccoon with a laptop

N° 03 / AI

01The premise

Reviewing AI slop at 3am.

Navigating the AI shift requires judgement, not just tooling. Illustrations by Joe Groove.

The tools changed overnight. The job description and expectations are still catching up. You know you need to keep up but you're not sure what you're keeping up with — or how to find the time. Whether you're an engineer who's spent years honing your craft or a manager trying to coach a team through a shift you're still figuring out yourself, the AI transition is disorienting.

What makes this so hard isn't just the skills gap and learning curve — it's also the identity shift underneath it. The advice to “just start using it” skips over the part where you have to work through what you're losing, and how to catch up when you feel like you're already behind.

Real fluency comes from building something.

With the industry feeling more pressured and competitive than ever, it's hard to find a safe space to experiment and learn. This course creates that space: structure, personal feedback, and a real project — at a price that doesn't require a development budget.

02This course is for you if…

You want to build real fluency.

✦You're an engineer who fears you are being left behind.
✦You want to level up but are getting lost figuring out how to begin.
✦You're tired of hype that doesn't match what you actually see at work.
✦You're an engineering manager trying to coach a team through a shift you're still figuring out yourself.
✦You want the support and accountability of coaching, without the price tag.

03This course is not for you if…

Already fluent? Move on.

✕You're already fluent with AI tools and want advanced techniques.
✕You're looking for a technical deep-dive into AI/ML systems.
✕You have no technical background — our examples and project work assume at least some.

04What you'll walk away with

Five things you'll actually have.

/ 01

✓

Clarity on which of your skills travel in the AI shift.

/ 02

✓

A personal project you've actually built and can point to.

/ 03

✓

Understanding how judgement is the differentiator, and more confidence in your own.

/ 04

✓

A strong starting point for building your own AI-specific workflows.

/ 05

✓

A plan for bringing what you've learned back to your team.

05The curriculum

Four modules. Eight weeks.

Project-based and personal — not a survey of tools. You build something real while developing the judgement that makes AI useful at scale. Run it over 8 weeks (one module every two weeks) or 4 weeks accelerated (one a week) — pick at checkout.

N° 01

Weeks 1–2

Navigating the Identity Threat.

If you've been feeling anxious, behind, or quietly resentful about the AI transition — that's a reasonable response. We'll look at what identity threat actually is, what's genuinely changing in the job, and where your existing skills in judgement and systems thinking are more load-bearing than ever.

N° 02

Weeks 3–4

Your Project, Part 1.

You can't build AI fluency by reading about it — you need to have the space to be a beginner in a low-stakes context. We'll help you find an idea that's genuinely yours, scope it to something you can actually ship, and get moving. By the end of this module, you'll have something running.

N° 03

Weeks 5–6

Your Project, Part 2.

Go deeper and develop the habits that make AI useful at scale — constraining problems well, evaluating output, and adding guardrails like tests and documentation as projects grow.

N° 04

Weeks 7–8

Bringing It Back to Your Team.

Individual fluency doesn't automatically transfer to the people around you. We'll cover the concrete moves that help teams — removing bottlenecks, systematising solvable problems, automating overhead — and how to build a learning culture that develops judgement across the team.

Want to see what the course feels like? Preview the Getting Started module for free.

Preview Intro Module

06How it works

Read it. Listen to it. Build it.

Self-paced and asynchronous, but structured — a cohort, a pace, a real project, and personal feedback on everything you turn in.

/ 01

8 weeks, 4 modules.

Self-paced, asynchronous content delivered over 8 weeks.

/ 02

~60 min a week.

Audio you can listen to on a walk, reading for between meetings, and project work at your own pace.

/ 03

Audio conversations.

Conversations between Cate and Jean you can listen to anytime.

/ 04

Written material.

Module content and frameworks to read between meetings.

/ 05

A personal project.

Build something real in a low-stakes environment you drive at your own pace.

/ 06

Personal feedback.

Submit your work and get written feedback from Cate and Jean on every submission.

07Meet your course guides

The coaches.

Cate Huston

Author · Fractional CTO · Coach

Author of The Engineering Leader, fractional CTO at Twill, and engineering leadership coach. Previously in leadership roles at DuckDuckGo and Automattic, and an advisor at Glowforge. She has been all over the world, but now lives in Ireland.

More about Cate at cate.blog →

Jean Hsu

Builder · Coach · Fractional VPE

Builder, writer, coach, and fractional engineering leader at early-stage startups. Previously in leadership roles at Pulse, Medium, and Range, and built out a leadership development company focused on engineers. She lives in Berkeley with her partner and three kids.

More about Jean at jeanhsu.com →

Cate and Jean have been coaching engineers and engineering managers for years. This course distills their best frameworks into structured exercises and a real project you can build — with personal feedback on every submission.

08Frequently asked

Common questions.

What if I fall behind on my project?

Module 3 is explicitly designed as breathing room. If you're behind, use it to catch up. If you're on track, use it to go deeper. The project is the most important part of this course, so we've built in space to protect it.

What AI plan do I need?

We recommend Claude, though the course works with any AI tool. It's built to be easily done on the Pro plan, but doable on the free plan if you are mindful of planning and okay with missing some convenience features.

Do I need to be actively coding to take this course?

You'll get the most from it if you have some technical background — enough to evaluate what AI produces and understand whether it's solving the right problem. You don't need to be currently hands-on; engineering managers who are less hands-on may find that applying their systems thinking and judgement is a significant accelerator.

I'm an engineering manager who hasn't coded in years. Is this still relevant?

Yes — and you may be better positioned than you think. The technical instincts you built before moving into management don't disappear; they just haven't been exercised as deeply or consistently. This course is a good way to dust them off in a low-stakes context.

What if I'm at a company where AI use is limited or restricted?

Whilst AI hasn't changed your day-to-day as much, it will still be impacting your overall career — and all the more reason to start creating structure for yourself so you can keep up with the broader industry shift.

Do you offer scholarships?

We offer scholarships on a per-cohort basis. Sign up for cohort notifications and we'll let you know when they're available.

Cohort opens · June 8, 2026

Ready to stop reacting?

Build real AI fluency with structure, a personal project, and Cate & Jean reading every submission. One-time payment, eight weeks.

One-time payment

$449$499

Early bird pricing active.

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