Over the last few days, I’ve been sitting with an uncomfortable question: what do I really know?

I’ve been with the same company for 7.5 years. I’ve grown from role to role, shipped features across multiple platforms, re-defined the engineering release strategy for a large-scale enterprise mobile application, and written my team’s approach to AI best practices at an organizational level. But what do I really know? What topic can I, without preparation, walk into a room and present on with genuine depth — not just enough to sound informed, but enough to withstand hard questions? If I walked into an interview tomorrow, how many companies would be hiring Cam Frederick off the shelf?

I pride myself on my ability to quickly diagnose a problem, get up to speed on the tools at my disposal, and find an effective solution. Maybe not perfect. Not always with the deepest understanding. But enough to get the job done.

As I ponder where software engineering as an industry is heading, I’m starting to fear that this strength of mine could easily become an Achilles’ heel.

How easy will it be to diagnose a problem and reach for a solution when I have unlimited access to Codex or Claude Code? How tempting will it be to let AI run loose in a codebase without truly comprehending what’s happening underneath the hood? These tools are extraordinarily good at producing output that looks right — which means the burden of actually understanding the problem shifts more, not less, onto the person directing them.

That leads me to believe that now, more than ever, is the time for engineering leaders to get back to being technical. Not just to stay relevant, but to lead well. To actually understand the problems their teams are facing. To spot the bottlenecks that matter. AI accentuates your understanding of a topic — it doesn’t replace it. If the foundation is shallow, you’ll just move faster toward the wrong answer. Without deep understanding, we risk using these powerful new tools the same way the Titanic used speed: confidently, right up until the end.

There are more than a few areas of my life where I know I’m just at the beginning of my journey, both personally and professionally. I’ve got a long way to go, and sitting with this question has pushed me to examine more carefully about where it makes sense to play the long game.

I can’t keep bouncing around, gleaning bits of knowledge and broadening my horizons as I go. At some point — and I think that point is now — it’s worth deciding what truly matters and going deep on it. Build something tangible to solidify that understanding. Stop consuming one-off blog posts and podcasts, and actually dive into a vertical with enough patience to understand the ins and outs.

As the saying goes, can’t let the urgent get in the way of the important. And right now, the important is knowing what I actually know — and closing the gap on what I don’t.