The Exchanges

Q Yeah, no, I don't, I think it's impossible. I have, I know your personality type, like there's just, it's just impossible for you not to do this. What is like, let's get into Devin. What is like winning with Devin look like to you?

A So again, you know, we're hyper competitive, but also, you know, the other thing about us is like, we all had kind of started our own companies before this. So our founding team is, it was a pretty big founding team. It was nine people. And most of us had already founded our own companies before we had done different things. It was true for a lot of the early team. And we've always thought about this as like, this is the big one. And so like, we want to go for it all, you know, we want to be a, a generational business. Like we want to build a hyperscaler and we want to go and do that. And like, maybe we'll succeed, maybe we won't, I don't know. But like, that's what we're going after. And, and I think to me, what that means In our field, um, in building software is like, you know, people sometimes use the term like coding agents or like, you know, like AI programming or something. I, I always like, you know, I, I was here that I think a little bit about like, well, we're not always, I mean, we're not gonna be interacting with code for that much longer, you know, or programs might not be the right, like level of abstraction, but I think what is always true probably is that it will be the human computer interface. And so what I mean by that is like, Like, the way that we think about Devon, if we're successful, is Devon is the way that humans can tell their computers what to do. B…

AI assessment note: “Devon is the way that humans can tell their computers what to do.”

Q How do you get to where you're saying, do you mind it? There is no, like, you're just the interface between humans and computers.

A So now we're going to get into a philosophical discussion of what it means to be a programmer or a software engineer, right? And I, I think like, you know, if you go all the way back, it's You know, there, there was a time where programming was like using the vacuum tubes, like plugging all those in and having it do the, the machine do the arithmetic, right? Like the ENIAC was, um, you know, with the first, in some sense that the first computer out there, although it was obviously very different, or it would have been like, you know, filling out the punch cards and like setting up the, or, or writing, you know, the, like putting down assembly, you know, or writing in basic or something, right? So, so we've gone through a lot of generations already is my point. And what does it look like? You know, going forward, when you talk about programming, all it really comes down to is like, how do you tell your computer what to do? And like every single piece of software that you use, if you're using, you know, Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or whatever, like that's a piece of software that somebody, or like some, you know, in these cases, some pretty big teams of engineers came together and thought through all these details of, okay, here's what I want it to do. Here's how I want it to look. Here's what I want this button to do. Here's how I want to architect it. Every single little dec…

AI assessment note: “And I think what we'll start to see is that abstraction will continue to climb”

Q Do you think all this stuff is a little crazy?

A I think it is directionally correct, but I think there's some, you know, there, there, there are definitely some places where people have gotten carried away, you know, people talk about, oh, like, yeah, like we rank our engineers by how many tokens they're spending. Well, let's, let's try and rank people by how much output they're actually producing or how much good work, you know, is actually getting done, you know, but, but obviously I think the, like, the math works out in terms of like, you know, the GPUs are expensive, but like, if your engineers are actually able to ship three times more, you know, then it's very clearly worth it. You just want to make sure you're doing it the right way, right? Obviously a lot there on just like, Tying to specific outcomes, tying to, okay, what are the actual tickets that are getting done? What are the, what are, what are the projects and the initiatives? And like this project, which was scooped out for 18 months and was going to be handed off to, you know, an outsourced contractor, um, and, and was going to cost you fifteen million. Like, let's just talk about how that you do this all internally with your own team and you do it for one million and you get it all done in three months, you know, uh, stuff like that, uh, which I think is super important. The second thing which I'll call out especially is Just being neutral. A lot of discus…

AI assessment note: “I think it is directionally correct, but I think... places where people have gotten carried away”

Q Did you send employees down to South America for NewBank?

A Well, so NewBank, I mean, the first one, honestly, our entire team was the Ford deployed team. Like we all flew to Brazil. Like, I mean, it's, it's like the first case, you know, it's like, it's like, Let's be real here, ok? Agents did not work generally, ok? And so, there was a lot of like, how do you make it work for you very specific? Like, we all flew to Brazil. I was there, the whole team was there. We were sitting there with their engineers, understanding, ok, so this is what you do in that case, this is what you do in that case, and this is what Devin needs to know, and Devin needs to be able to read these things, and like going and debugging their like exact problems. Now, obviously, it's not like that at all, because, you know.

AI assessment note: “our entire team was the Ford deployed team. Like we all flew to Brazil.”

Q What were you competing in when you were younger besides math competitions?

A Yeah, well basically everything, so obviously the main thing was math and programming competitions, and so ever since I was really young, that was like, That was, like, my, like, life, you know. My whole goal was to become, like, world champion of competitive programming. I would do that all the time as a kid. I would do, you know, the, the, the really great thing about these competitions too is, is, You know, you, you compete in your school competition, and if you do well enough in that, then you make it qualify for the, the local or like the city, um, competition, and then if you do well in that, then you get to like the regional competition and state competition, and then you get to go to the national thing, the international thing, right? And so it's, it's like a very nice setup where sooner or later you get to kind of meet people who are like you, basically. When I was a kid doing these competitions, going for that, it was like, oh, I really cared about those, People that I met through these national, international competitions were honestly more, like, they were my childhood friends more than, like, the people around me in Baton Rouge, Louisiana were. And it was like, we would hang out online, we would talk about math, we'd talk about problems. But all the other things, too, I mean, I played basically all the different competitive games. So, like, I, I played a lot of Sup…

AI assessment note: “I played a lot of Super Smash Brothers... Tetris. I played a lot of poker.”

Q If Devin could work for a year without any human assistance, what would you have it do right now? Destroy your competitors.

A All sorts of things. I mean, no, I mean, I, I still wake up and think about this in every different, like, you know, every little thing that I run, you know, dumb example. Yesterday I was sending out, like, a bulk email. And I was, like, trying to get the, like, email formatter to work, and it was, like, kind of painful. You know, some of these things are still, like, kind of hard to use, or it doesn't support a certain, like, styling of the email that you wanted to go do. I think the thing, I, like, had pasted something with indents, and then it was, like, I just couldn't, like, un-indent them, because the editor, like, I don't know, there were some weird things where the editor, like, would not allow you to un-indent one part, but not the other, or whatever. And I was just thinking, like, It's really crazy that like, that I'm still doing this basically, right? Like in as much simplicity or honestly more as it would take you to explain this to another person, like, hey, here's what I want to do. I just like, I'm just trying to make it look like this and then this and then that, like the rest of that execution should just be done for you, you know? And then you get to the point where you actually really just to get to spend all your time thinking about, well, what do you want to do? You know, what, what do you want to build? What do you want to create? Like, what are the things…

AI assessment note: “All sorts of things. I mean, no, I mean, I, I still wake up and think about this”