AI Development Isn’t an Easy Button—with Aleksander Hakestad (Apart Tech)

What if writing code isn’t actually the most important part of engineering?

In this episode of Futureproof, Prakash Chandran sits down with Aleksander Hakestad, CTO and co-founder at Apart Tech, to explore what it really takes to build software in an AI-native world without losing quality, craft, or control. Aleksander explains why the best leaders stay hands-on so they can evaluate quality, why depth of expertise beats climbing the career ladder, and why communication becomes the true bottleneck in modern engineering—especially across cultures and teams. Together, they unpack a pragmatic model for AI-assisted development where agents touch everything, humans own the architecture, and teams learn fast by setting clear standards, building tight feedback loops, and committing fully to a new way of working.

Topics covered include:

• AI-assisted development is still engineering: Why prompting is only the start—and disciplined iteration is what makes it reliable.
• Hands-on leadership and quality control: Why leaders must stay close enough to the craft to evaluate output and set the bar.
• Communication as the real bottleneck: How visual systems reduce misalignment across teams, languages, and cultures.
• From big teams to small, leveraged teams: How agentic workflows can create outsized throughput with a small core team.
• Depth over titles: Why mastering a domain matters more than career climb—and why expertise is more valuable than ever.

Episode ID: 18740056-ai-development-isn-t-an-easy-button-with-aleksander-hakestad-apart-tech

Subscribe to Futureproof wherever you get your podcasts.

From Xano - The fastest way to create a production-ready backend for any app or agent. Xano unifies AI speed, code control, and visual clarity, so you never trade reliability for velocity. Sign up for free today.