The AI Engineer Playbook: Your Path to Becoming a Top 1% Builder
These are my opinions. Think whatever you want.
Most engineers and builders are getting it wrong. They’re obsessed with the tools, the frameworks, the latest shiny tech—and they’re missing the entire point.
Let me be clear about something: your value isn’t determined by how many languages you know or which framework you’ve mastered. Your value is calculated by three things:
The level of problems you can solve
The amount of time you save
The revenue you generate
That’s it. Everything else is noise.
The Engineering Formula
Here’s the formula I use to navigate almost every decision: minimize human in the loop and engineering overhead, maximize learnings and revenue/time saved.
But let’s get more specific. To build successful technology, you need exactly two ingredients:
1. A great problem to solve — Create real value.
2. The best solution — Which has two components:
System/codebase quality — The tech foundation most of you obsess over
User experience simplicity — How easy your solution actually is to use
Get these right—the experience, quality of solution, and right problem—and you have a solid foundation. Then come the other variables. But this part is the hardest and requires iteration. Over and over again.
The first moat is speed. You want to be strategic about what you build. Think of the business like a system—it has components and variables. Break it down. Once you have this foundation, study the 7 Powers framework to understand what comes next.
Reverse Engineering Excellence
Now that we understand what great looks like, we can “reverse engineer” your path to maximize value. Whether you’re in corporate, a startup, or founding your own company, the game is the same—just played differently and at different speeds.
Here’s what you need to remember: Everyone is biased.
The CMO views everything through a marketing lens. Sales sees the world through revenue. You’re biased toward technology. This is where you need to remind yourself of something important: there’s a time to learn and play with technology, and a time to build. Fast. Clean.
Learn when to build fast versus learn deeply.
Excellence to me looks like someone who is:
Excellent technically
Builds very fast with minimal tech debt
Understands the business
Thinks like a user
Communicates clearly
Great collaborator
Your Unique Playbook
Of course, your exact playbook will be different than mine. Everyone’s “top 1% path” differs. Every top player has areas where they excel, but everyone needs to keep improving.
Identify your spikes. Constantly upgrade your weaknesses.
The Long Game
You’re playing a long-term game. Play infinite games. You need to figure out what drives your curiosity most. Things that feel like work to others but feel like a game to you. What feels like play to you feels like work to others. Maximize your growth in those areas.
Here’s my secret—I have three pillars, in this order of importance:
1. Maximize my growth
2. Maximize my impact
3. Maximize my wealth (for me + loved ones)
The Modern AI Engineer
Let me be blunt: Do not vibe code. You CAN vibe engineer.
Be an AI Engineer—leverage models intentionally. DO NOT complain about tools not working well. Test lots of them. Test different models. You don’t care about the tools—you care about speed and quality. If you can create three entire web apps with no code debt in three hours? Good!
Tools don’t matter. Speed + quality do.
You want consistency in practicing specific skills. Follow what makes you curious. Build things in public. Join communities. Share your wins weekly. Share your growth. Find like-minded people only. Reach out to people who impress you.
On mentors: Two things matter. First, you must know what you want. Second, the perfect mentor is someone who has done/achieved what you want multiple times, taught it multiple times, and the people they taught got results multiple times.
Your Action Plan
Use Claude Code, Cursor, Replit, Lovable. Explore LLMs, multimodal models, system design. Learn cloud, backend, frontend.
DO NOT GET ATTACHED TO ONE TECHNOLOGY. Get attached to growth.
Just build. Focus on increasing your curiosity and skills over and over again. Do not wait to find someone with the “right” skills to build what you want.
Weekly Builder Rhythm
On Sunday or Monday, plan out your wins for the week to make it great—professionally and personally.
Separate build mode versus learn mode. When you’re in builder mode for your company or the company you work for, move fast. When you’re in learning time, study, learn, read, ask questions.
We have the best tutors ever created available 24/7. It would be really stupid not to leverage this. Learning anything has never been easier. You have NO excuses.
Final Blueprint
Optimize for four things:
Time • Quality • Curiosity • Repetition
“Just build. Improve every loop.”
Remember: Time and quality of building are what you’re optimizing for. Try multiple technologies. Create accounts. Test products. Grow.
There you go. You have my blueprint for becoming a top 1% builder.
Now go build.