The Exchanges

Q bottleneck with all these PRs. Who's going to review them all? The next big open question is just like, okay, now we need to, now, now humans are necessary for figuring out what to build, what to prioritize. And you're saying that's where cloud code is starting to help you. Is it, has it gotten a lot better with like, say, Opus four, six, or what's been the trajectory there?

A Yeah. Yeah. It's improved a lot. Um, I, I think some of it is kind of like training that we do specific to coding. Um, so, you know, obviously, you know, best coding model in the world and, you know, it's getting better and better. Like 4.6 is just incredible, but also actually a lot of the training that we do outside of coding translates pretty well too. So there is this kind of like transfer where you teach the model to do, you know, X and it kind of gets better at Y. Um, yeah. And the, the gains have just been insane. Like adanthropic Over the last year, like, since we introduced quad code, we probably, I don't know the exact number, we probably, like, forex the engineering team or something like this, but productivity per engineer has increased 200% in terms of, like, pull requests. And, like, this number is just crazy for anyone that actually works in the space and works on dev productivity. Because back in a previous life, I was at Meta, and, you know, one of my responsibilities was code quality for the company. So this is, like, all of our code bases, that was my responsibility, like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, all this stuff. Um, and a lot of that was about productivity, because if you make the code higher quality, then engineers are more productive. And things that we saw is, you know, in a year with hundreds of engineers working on it, you would see a gain of like …

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Yeah. It's improved a lot.”

Q I want to start with a spicy question. About six months ago, I don't know if people even remember this, you actually left Anthropic, you joined Cursor, and then two weeks later you went back to Anthropic. What happened there? I don't think I've ever heard the actual story.

A It's the fastest job change that I've ever had. Um, I joined Cursor because I'm a big fan of the product, and honestly I met the team and I was just really impressed. Uh, they're an awesome team. Uh, I still, I still think they're awesome, and they're just building really cool stuff, and kind of, they, they saw where AI coding was going, I think, before a lot of people did. So the idea of building good product was just very exciting for me. I think as soon as I got there, what I started to realize is what I really missed about Ant was the mission. And that's actually what originally drove me to Ant also. Cause, uh, but before I joined Anthropic, I was, you know, I was working in big tech and then I was, at some point I wanted to work at a, at a lab to just help shape the future of this crazy thing that, that we're building in some way. And the thing that drew me to Anthropic was the mission and it was, you know, it's all about safety. And when you talk to people at Anthropic, just like find someone in the hallway, if you ask them why they're here, the answer is always going to be safety. Um, and so the, this kind of like mission drivenness just really, really resonated with me, and I just know personally it's something I need in order to be happy. Um, and I, that's just the thing that I really missed, and I found that, you know, whatever the work might be, no matter how excitin…

AI assessment note: “what I started to realize is what I really missed about Ant was the mission.”

Q Two more questions. Um, do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?

A Use common sense. I think a lot of the failures that I see in, especially in a work environment is people just failing to use common sense. Like they follow a process without thinking about it. Um, they just do a thing without thinking about it, or they're working on a product that's like not a good product or not a good idea. And they're just following the momentum and not thinking about it. I think the best results that I see are people thinking from first principles and just developing their own common sense. Like if, if something smells weird, then, you know, it's probably not a good idea. So I think, I think just this, this is the single advice that I give, you know, to coworkers more, more than anything too.

AI assessment note: “Use common sense.”

Q like, oh man, oh, Niza has a question and answer, or it's like blocked on something, or it's, or I just like, I'm like, there's all this productivity I'm losing. I can't, like, I need to wake up and get it going again. Is that something you feel? Is that something your team feels? Do you feel like this is a, a problem we need to track and think about?

A I always have a bunch of agents running. So like at the moment I have like five agents running and at any moment, like, you know, like I, I wake up and I, I start a bunch of agents. Like the first thing I did when I woke up was like, oh man, I, I want, I really want to check this thing. So like I opened up my phone, quad iOS app, code tab, uh, you know, like agent do, do blah, blah, blah. Cause I, I wrote some code yesterday and I was like, wait, did, did I do this right? I was like, Kind of double, double guessing something, and it was correct. But now it's just like so easy to do this. So, I don't know, there is this little bit of anxiety maybe. I personally haven't really felt it just because I have agents running all the time. Um, and I'm also just like not locked into a terminal anymore. Maybe a third of my code now is in the terminal, but also a third is, uh, using the desktop app. And then a third is the iOS app, which is just so surprising because I did not think that this would be the way that I code, uh, in, even in twenty-twenty-six.

AI assessment note: “I personally haven't really felt it just because I have agents running all the time.”

Q alluding to is jobs and job loss and things like that. There's this concept of Jevons paradox of just as we can do more, we hire more, and it's not actually as scary as it looks. What have you experienced so far, I guess, with AI becoming a big part of the engineering job? Just are you hiring more than if you didn't have AI and just thoughts on jobs?

A Yeah. I mean, for our team, we're, we're hiring. Um, so Quadco team is hiring Um, if you're interested, just check out the jobs page on, on Anthropic. Personally, it's, you know, all this stuff has just made me enjoy my work more. I have never enjoyed coding as much as I do today because I don't have to deal with all the minutia. So for me personally, it's been quite exciting. This is something that we hear from a lot of customers where they love the tool. They love quad code because it just makes coding delightful again. Uh, and that's just, that's just so fun for them. But it's hard to know where this thing is going to go. And I, again, I just like, I have to reach for these historical analogs. Uh, and I, I think the printing press is just such a good one because what happened is this technology that was locked away to a small set of people, like knowing how to read and write became accessible to everyone. It was just inherently democratizing. Everyone started to be able to do this. And if that wasn't the case, then something like the Renaissance just could never have happened. Because a lot of the Renaissance, it was about, like, knowledge spreading. It was about, like, written records that people used to communicate. Um, you know, because there were no phones or anything like this. There wasn't, there was no internet at the time. So it's about like, what does this enable ne…

AI assessment note: “I mean, for our team, we're, we're hiring.”

Q Amazing. Okay. Just a couple more questions to round things out. What's your take on Codex? How do you feel about that product? How do you feel about where they're going? Just kind of competing in this very competitive space, uh, in coding agents.

A Yeah, I actually haven't really used it, but, uh, I, I think I did use it maybe when it came out. It looked a lot like quad code to me, so that was kind of flattering. It's, I think it's actually good, you know, to have more competition, because people should get to choose, and hopefully it forces all of us to, like, do an even better job. Honestly, for our team though, we're just focused on solving the problems that users have. Um, so for us, you know, we don't spend a lot of time looking at competing products. We don't really try the other products. I, you know, you kind of, you want to be aware of them and you want to know they exist. But for me, I just, I love talking to users. I love making the product better. Um, I, I love just acting on, on feedback. So it's really just about building a, building a good product.

AI assessment note: “for our team though, we're just focused on solving the problems that users have”