I interviewed 10 FAANG engineers about AI coding.

What they're actually doing shocked me:

🎯 The Pattern Every Single One Follows

8 out of 10 mentioned the same workflow.

Not what LinkedIn influencers are preaching.

Way more boring. Way more effective.

Here's their actual process:

1️⃣ Design Docs Still Rule Everything

"AI can't architect at scale" - Meta engineer

Every project starts with human-written technical design.

No exceptions. AI doesn't touch this.

One Google engineer: "We tried. The AI suggested microservices for a calculator app."

2️⃣ The Design Review Bloodbath

Senior engineers destroy your architecture.

This stays 100% human.

"Better to cry in design review than debug in prod" - Amazon SDE

3️⃣ Test-Driven Development + AI (The Magic Combo)

Here's where AI enters:

• Human writes test requirements

• AI generates test cases

• Human reviews and approves

• AI writes code to pass tests

Microsoft engineer: "AI writes better edge case tests than juniors"

4️⃣ The Two-Human Rule

Every line of AI-generated code needs two human approvals.

AI helps catch style issues and bugs during review.

But architecture decisions? Still human territory.

5️⃣ Production Metrics That Matter

Average speed increase: 30%

Bug reduction: 15%

Most gains from: Test generation and boilerplate

The shocking part? It's not about replacing thinking.

✅ What AI Actually Does Well:

• Generates comprehensive test suites

• Writes boilerplate and CRUD operations

• Catches obvious bugs in review

• Documents existing code

❌ What Humans Still Own:

• System architecture

• Performance optimization

• Security decisions

• Debugging complex issues

The uncomfortable truth from a Netflix engineer:

"Junior devs using AI without understanding fundamentals are creating tomorrow's tech debt. Senior devs using AI are shipping 30% faster."

The consensus?

AI is a senior engineer's best friend.

And a junior engineer's worst enemy.

Why? Because you need to know what good looks like before you can spot bad AI suggestions.

One Apple engineer summed it up:

"We're not training AI to replace engineers. We're training engineers to leverage AI."

Your move?

Learn to architect first. Then let AI handle the boring parts.

Who else is using AI in production? What's your workflow?

P.S. The funniest quote: "Our AI writes better unit tests than our contractors. But our contractors don't hallucinate database schemas."