SE AI Readiness Score

An SE who is strong at AI-assisted call prep but never touches it for competitive research has a completely different gap than one who is the reverse. A single number flattens that. The shape of the radar tells you where to focus. The score just tells you roughly where you are overall.

The IC questions ask what you know and do. The manager questions ask what you've built: onboarding, shared tooling, coaching, measurement, culture. An SE manager who says "my team uses AI" but can't describe how they enabled or measured it has hired people who figured it out themselves. That's individual initiative, not team readiness.

Stage names exist because a number in isolation is hard to act on. "The Selective User" tells you something specific: AI is in your toolkit but not your system. You use it well in a few workflows and leave value on the table in others. The stage points to the next level. A score doesn't.

The estimates are directional. The intent is to make "I could be getting more out of AI" feel specific enough to act on. Vague potential is easy to defer. A number you can visualize as recovered hours in a week is harder to leave on the table.

If your lowest score is POV writing, you get POV-specific prompting advice. The recommendations are written for the specific workflow gap you have, because generic advice about "using AI more" changes nothing for anyone.