Carol Palombini is a Leadership & Culture Consultant specializing in the human side of AI adoption. A psychologist, former Head of HR, and executive coach with extensive experience working with technology leaders, she helps organizations assess whether their leaders, people, and culture are ready for AI-driven change.

Her work brings leadership readiness, psychological safety, workforce attitudes, and burnout risk into AI adoption strategy, helping organizations create the conditions for AI to move from experimentation to sustainable adoption.

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why AI adoption resistance is an influence problem, not a technical one
2. The two types of leaders AI disruption is creating
3. Why a three-year AI vision is impossible for AI adoption
4. Why metacognition is becoming engineers' most valuable skill
5. Why measuring AI adoption by tokens burned backfires

Carol's details:

Website: https://www.carolpalombini.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolpalombini/
Substack: https://carolpalombini.substack.com/

Michał Poczwardowski is a Staff Engineering Manager with over a decade of combined engineering, leadership, and management experience, and the founder of Perspectiveship, a newsletter on timeless leadership and communication skills. He mentors software leaders in decision-making and problem-solving.

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why AI writing sounds the same, and why only your own stories make it worth reading
2. Why outsourcing every decision to AI is like a runner who stops training
3. The €1,000 fake course he built on April Fool's Day as a honeypot for AI agents
4. How he uses an Activity Watch MCP server to get a daily AI-generated focus report
5. What a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat taught him about detaching from stress

Michał's details:
Perspectiveship: https://read.perspectiveship.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/poczwardowski/

Elena Calvillo is an independent product builder based in Mexico City. After more than a decade in enterprise product management, she went independent in January 2026 and now builds her own products full time, including DraftKit, an async writing workspace for Substack creators. She writes Prompt-Led Product on Substack, where she teaches product managers how to build with AI instead of just talking about it.

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why she stopped waiting for permission to build and went independent with no team and no engineers
2. How the AI Advent Challenge grew into a community of almost 900 people with 200 learning daily
3. Why she scrapped the calendar-first version of DraftKit after listening to what writers actually wanted
4. How she built an MCP protocol that lets paid subscribers search her entire prompt library from Claude
5. Why she treats user feedback as neutral information instead of praise or criticism

Elena's details:
Prompt-Led Product: https://promptledproduct.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-product-manager/
DraftKit: https://draftkit.app
AI Advent Challenge: https://aiadventchallenge.com