That’s how the event was introduced, and it set the tone perfectly for everything that followed.

At the latest SaaStanak meetup co-organized with Split Tech City at The Center of Excellence of Split-Dalmatia County, Toma Puljak from Daytona took the stage in front of a full room and walked through what AI actually looks like in real production environments.

No hype, no “AI will replace engineers” narrative, just practical insights from teams already working with it daily.

What stood out early on was how quickly AI shifts from being a productivity boost to a responsibility question. Yes, developers are shipping more. That part is undeniable. But as shown in the presentation, AI-generated code also comes with trade-offs.

Higher vulnerability rates, more duplicated code, and significantly higher churn.

The message wasn’t that AI is bad, but that speed without control creates problems that show up later.

One slide that got a lot of attention highlighted just how fast the tooling landscape is growing: from just a handful of tools a couple of years ago to dozens today, with even more coming. You could feel that resonate with the audience, because it’s something everyone is dealing with: not whether to use AI, but how to choose and manage it.

The most interesting part, though, came during the discussion. The audience leaned into questions around trust and responsibility. How much AI-generated code is safe to push to production, what this means for junior engineers, and how teams can maintain quality when everyone is using similar tools.

There was also a subtle but important shift in how the role of engineers was framed. AI isn’t just changing how code is written; it’s exposing how people think, how well they understand systems, and how much ownership they take over what they ship.

This meetup serves as a small introduction to the main event taking place in Šibenik from May 25–27, where Split Tech City members are eligible for a discount.

Overall, the event felt less like a talk about the future and more like a reality check for the present. The kind of conversation that moves beyond hype and into actual day-to-day challenges teams are already facing.

The discussion was one where you can talk for hours, and we did, so we hopped into a nearby cafe to continue it.

And in that context, the opening line lands differently.

AI isn’t coming for your job, but it is making it a lot harder to hide behind excuses.