AI Reflections of a New Grad Engineer | by Affirm Technology | Affirm Tech Blog | Oct, 2026 | Medium
I joined Affirm in August 2025 as a new grad engineer through the Early Career Engineering Program. That same month, Affirm adopted Cursor, and since then much has changed from trying Cursor for the first time, to onboarding onto Claude in February, to now having AI integrated into almost every part of my workflow. As I’ve talked to more people about it, it’s been interesting to notice how widely experiences vary among those with different years of experience B.C. (Before Claude). Likewise, I imagine being a new grad this year will feel different than when I started just one year ago. I want to share these reflections to invite conversation around how working with AI differs across career stages and how that can influence the way we adapt to it. I hope that this can also inform the way we onboard and guide new engineers into an AI-integrated workplace. My own experience diving into the agentic tooling world has shifted a lot through the year. While I don’t think these dynamics are nece