Menil Vukovic is the CEO of Pear Shadow, a software development and venture-building company partnering with startups and enterprises to ship maintainable web and mobile products at scale. Before founding Pear Shadow, Menil led engineering at a Shopify agency working with Philips, Mayo Clinic, and other major brands. In this episode of Expert Insight Interview, he joins John Golden to unpack what software engineering practices look like — and should look like — now that AI is part of every developer’s workflow.
This conversation cuts past the panic and the hype. Menil explains why the engineer’s role has shifted from writing code to orchestrating AI agents, why decades of fundamentals matter more (not less) in this new era, and how his own team moved from chaotic AI experimentation to a disciplined three-stage approach.
In this episode, John and Menil cover:
- Why AI changes software engineering more fundamentally than any tool that came before
- The “YOLO stage” trap and how to structure AI use across an engineering team
- Why senior engineers actually gain ground in the AI era
- The new ratio: 20% writing code, 80% review, documentation, and orchestration
- Vibe coding — when it works, when it fails, and why git practices stay non-negotiable
- The industries (embedded, avionics, military) where AI adoption will move more slowly
If you build software, lead engineers, or hire technical talent, this episode delivers a working framework for the next five years. To learn more about Menil and Pear Shadow, visit pearshadow.com.
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