Less Time, More Value: My 2026 AI Mindset
Hey folks, I’m James, a Senior Staff Developer with the Infrastructure & Enablement group here at Jane. I’ve been spending some time in 2025 exploring how AI tools fit into the day-to-day as a technical leader, not simply as the next new thing in tech, but in a way that’s sustainable for individuals as well as our organization. It’s helped me reshape how I think about how we spend our time as developers.
We’ve been pretty fortunate at Jane to be given essentially carte blanche in the AI tooling space to figure out what works and what doesn’t. While there’s been pressure to iterate quickly to find the “what works”, I’ve essentially been able to spend the last 6-8 months finding the right sauce of interweaving AI tooling into my day-to-day. We see a lot of content out there pitching the extremes, from “AI will replace every developer under a senior” to “There’s no place for AI in software engineering”. As with all things in life, it’s a lot more subtle and nuanced than these sorts of statements make it out to be.
Finding the Balance, Time vs Value
I’m also incredibly fortunate to have started some additional growth and leadership coaching at Jane (talk about a perk), and my coach and I recently discussed asking myself “Where am I spending my time?” versus “Where am I spending my value?”. I’ve been looking at the work I’m doing both short and long term, slotting them into buckets of where I’m just putting in work into areas that aren’t where I specifically bring value to Jane, and where my impact is most valuable. It’s been an eye opener to say the least.
Alright, now you’re saying “James, what does this have to do with AI?!”. Fair point, let’s tie it all together.
No AI tooling is going to take away your value as an engineer, but they sure are great at taking things off your plate where you’re spending time. Ask yourself the same question “Am I spending my time, or my value on this task?”. If it’s the former, look to augment your capabilities on that task with AI tooling. Here’s a recent example.
A Real Example, Stitching Together Structurizr Workspace Diagrams
I recently dusted off a project I was working on last year implementing C4 diagrams using the Structurizr DSL. If you’re not familiar with the C4 style of diagrams, or the Structurizer DSL, it’s a way to define diagrams programmatically, think of it like JSON for system architecture. Structurizr earlier this year implemented exports of workspaces as static sites to make viewing and embedding diagrams easier without needing to run the server components. Writing something that collates up a bunch of workspace exports dynamically from subdirectories, exporting them using the CLI, and building a splash page with titles, descriptions, and last modified dates isn’t really where I’m valuable to Jane, even when the output is valuable to the org. Could I have delegated this task out to another engineer in the group? Maybe. Would they be spending their time or their value? A few minutes curating a well structured, contextual prompt, and a bit of back and forth over 15 minutes, and the work was done. The end result being significantly better than arguably any engineer I know would have produced in the same 20 minutes.
Reframing the Work We Do as Staff Developers
As a Staff Developer, we need to remain sharp by still typing code every so often, but we should be doing so in areas that are a use of our value, not our time. Glue up shell scripts aren’t an area that I consider to be in my “value” bucket.
A colleague of mine likes to say “I make AI do all the things I hate doing” and I think this sums up my position perfectly. As a Staff Developer those tasks that feel like pulling teeth or that you punt down the line as low priority, generally are the things we are spending our time and not our value. If you’re trying to figure out how to make AI work for you, try integrating it into tasks falling into your “time spent” bucket.
Looking back on this experience, this example wasn’t about writing automation scripts, it was about reclaiming time, not just mine - also the fictional developer I could have delegated this to, and dedicating that to tasks that better fit my value to Jane and our clinics. AI isn’t replacing my role, but it is changing what I do with my time every day.
Wrapping Up
What about you? Where are you spending your time versus your value? If you’ve found creative ways for AI to take on your “time” tasks, I’d love to hear about them.
If you’d like to join me in exploring more of the future of software development at Jane, and helping us help the helpers, check out our careers page to see where you want to spend your value 😉.
