The Exchanges

Q companies are doing different routes. So there's building an IDE for engineers to work within and adding AI magic to it. There's another route of just a full AI agentic Devon sort of product. And then there's just like a model That is very good at coding and focusing on building the best possible coding model. What made you decide and see that the ID path was the best route?

A The folks who were from the get-go working on just a, uh, a model or working on end-to-end, uh, automation, uh, programming, I think, uh, They were trying to build something very different from us, which is me care about giving humans control over all the decisions, um, in kind of the end tool that they're building. And I think those folks were very much thinking of a, of a future where kind of, you know, end to end the whole thing is done by AI and maybe like the AI is making all the decisions too. And so one, there was kind of like a personal interest component. Two, I think that, ah, always we try to be, ah, intense realists about where the technology is today. You know, very, very, very excited about how AI is going to mature over the course of many decades. But, ah, you know, I think that sometimes, ah, people, you know, there's a, there's an instinct to, to see AI doing magical things in one area, and then kind of anthropomorphize these models, and think, you know, it's better than a smart person here, and so it must be better than a smart person there. But these things have massive issues. And, um, we, uh, from the, from the very start, our, our product development process was really about dogfooding and using the tool intensely every day. And we, we never wanted to ship anything that wasn't, wasn't useful to us. And, you know, we had the benefit of doing that because we…

AI assessment note: “we care about giving humans control over all the decisions”

Q interesting that Microsoft was actually, like, right at this set, like, at the center of this first with an amazing product, amazing distribution co-pilot. You said it was, like, the thing that got you over the hump of, like, wow, there could be something really big here, and it doesn't feel like they're winning. It feels like they're falling behind. What do you think? What do you think happened there?

A I think that there are, like, specific historical reasons why Copilot might not have lived up, right, so far have, have kind of, uh, lived up to the expectations that some people have for it. And then I think that there are structural reasons. I think the structural reason is, and to be clear, you know, Microsoft, uh, you know, in the Copilot case, obviously a big inspiration for our work. Um, and in general, I, you know, I think they do lots of awesome things, and we're users of many Microsoft products. Um, But I think that this is a market that's not super friendly to incumbents, in that, um, you know, a market that's friendly to incumbents might be one where there's only so much to do, it kind of gets commoditized fairly quickly, and you can bundle that in with other products. And where the ROI between, you know, different products is, you know, quite, quite small. And, you know, in that case, perhaps it doesn't make sense to buy the innovative solution. It makes sense to just kind of buy that thing spumbled in with other stuff. Another market that might be, you know, particularly helpful for incumbents is one where there's, you know, from, from the get-go, it's just like you have your stuff in one place, and it's like really, really excruciatingly hard to switch. And, you know, for better or for worse, I think in, in our case, you can try out different tools. You can decide…

AI assessment note: “this is a market that's not super friendly to incumbents”

Q This, uh, begs the question for people that are getting, are currently engineers or thinking about becoming engineers or designers or product managers, like what skills do you think will be more, more and more valuable in this world of the, what comes after code?

A I think taste will be increasingly More valuable. And I think often people think about tastes in the realm of software. They think about, you know, visuals or taste over smooth animations and, ah, you know, coloring things, UI, UX, et cetera, on kind of the visual design of things. And I think more and more, and you know, the visual side of things is an important part of defining, you know, a piece of software. But then, as mentioned before, I think that the other half of defining a piece of software is the logic of it and how the thing works. And Uh, we have amazing tools for speccing out the visuals of things, and then when you get into the, the logic of how a piece of software works, really the best representation we have of that is code right now. You can kind of gesture at it with Figma, and you can gesture at it with writing down notes, um, but it's, you know, when you have an actual working prototype, and so I think that more and more being, being an engineer will start to feel like being a logic designer. And really it will be about specifying your intent for how exactly you want everything to work. And it will less be about, ah, it will be more, more about the, the what and a little bit less about the how, um, exactly you're going to do things under the hood. Uh, and so, yeah, I think, I think case will be increasingly important. I think one aspect of software engineer…

AI assessment note: “I think taste will be increasingly More valuable.”

Q Was there an inflection point after those three months where things just started to really take off?

A To me, I almost felt fairly slow to begin with, um, and, you know, maybe, maybe comes from some impatience on our part, um, but, uh, one, one, I think, you know, there's the, the overall speed of the growth, which is, um, uh, you know, which continues to take us by surprise. I think one of the things that, uh, has been most surprising too is that the growth has been Fairly just consistent on an exponential of just consistent month-over-month growth. Accelerated at times by, um, launches on our part and other things. But, uh, you know, an exponential to begin with feels, feels fairly slow and the, the numbers are really low. And, uh, so it didn't, it didn't really feel off to the races to begin with.

AI assessment note: “growth has been Fairly just consistent on an exponential of just consistent month-over-month growth”

Q What are some of those learnings for folks that are, you know, hiring right now? What's something you missed or, or learned?

A I think, you know, to start with, uh, we maybe, we actually biased a little bit too much towards, um, looking for people who fit the archetype of well-known school, very young, had done the things that were like, you know, high credential, um, in those well-known school environments. And, um, And actually, like, you know, I think found, uh, we're lucky early on to find a lot of, you know, uh, to find, uh, fantastic people who are willing to, you know, to do this with us, uh, who were, who were later career. And so, yeah, I think we should kind of spend a bunch of time on maybe a little bit of the wrong profile to begin with. And part of that was a seniority thing. Part of that was like, you know, kind of an interest and experience thing too. Uh, we have hired people who are excellent, excellent, excellent, and very young, but they maybe look Uh, in some cases slightly different from, you know, being straight out of central casting. You know, another lesson is just, like, we very much evolved our interview loop, and so now we, uh, you know, we have, like, a hand-rolled set of interview questions, and then, you know, kind of core to our, um, core to how we interview, too, is, is actually we have people on site for two days and do, do a project with us, a work test project. And, um, that has worked really well, but increasingly you're finding that. And then, yeah, I think how to, …

AI assessment note: “we actually biased a little bit too much towards, um, looking for people who fit”

Q Do you think there's going to be an inflection point of like engineering roles start to kind of slow down? Uh, I know this is like a big question, but just it's, do you see engineers being more and more needed across all these companies? Or do you think at some point, There's all these cursor agents running, building for us.

A Again, we, we kind of have the view that like, there's this, you know, both long, messy middle of, uh, you know, it, it not jumping to a, just like you step back and you ask for all your stuff to be done and you have your engineering department and, you know, very much like you want to evolve from programming as it exists today. We want humans to be in the driver's seat. And, you know, we think even in the end state, like that's, you know, giving folks control over everything is, is really important. Um, and you will need professionals to do that and kind of decide what the, the software looks like. So both, both, I think that yes, like, you know, uh, like, you know, engineers, uh, are, are definitely needed. Uh, I think that engineers will be able to do much more. I think the demand for software is very lasting, which is, you know, not the most novel thing, but I think it's, it's kind of crazy to think about How expensive and labor intensive it is to build things that are pretty simple and easy to specify, or it would look like it to the outside observer, and, you know, just how hard those things are to do right now. And so if you can, you know, all of the stuff that exists right now that's, you know, justified by The cost and demand that we have now, if you could bring that down by order some magnitude, I think you would have tons and tons and tons of more stuff that we could…

AI assessment note: “I think that yes, like, you know, engineers are definitely needed.”