“Engineers are becoming sorcerers” | The future of software development with OpenAI’s Sherwin Wu

100% of our PR's are reviewed by codex. 4 engineers. I don't know what job has changed more in the past couple of years. Engineers are becoming tech leads. They're managing fleets and fleets of agents.

It literally feels like we're wizard's casting all these spells. And these spells are kind of like going on doing things for you. What do you think people aren't pricing in yet?

The second are third order effects of the one person billion dollar start up.

Two enable a one person billion dollar start up. There might be a hundred other small start up spilling the spokes off for it.

“So I think we might actually enter into a golden age of B to B SaaS.”

I've been hearing more and more. There's this stress. People feel when their agents aren't working. There's a team that's actually doing an experiment right now with an open AI where they are maintaining a 100% codex written code base.

They run into the exact problems that you're describing. And so usually you're like, alright, I'll roll up my sleeves and figure it out. It doesn't have that escape hatch. You've shared that listening to customers not always the right strategy in AI. The field and the models themselves are just changing so, so quickly.

They tend to like disrupt themselves.

The models will eat your scaffolding for breakfast. Which are advice to folks that are like, okay, I don't want to miss the boat. Make sure you're building for where the models are going and not where they are today. But there's a quote from Kevin Whale or VP of Science here.

“And he likes saying this is the worst the models will ever be.”

Today my guest is Sherwin Wu, head of engineering for Open AI's API and developer platform. Considering that essentially every AI start up integrates with Open AI's APIs, Sherwin has an incredibly unique and broad view into what is going on and where things are heading. Let's get into it after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by DX, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers.

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I want to start with what's feeling like a barometer of progress in AI, especially in engineering. What percentage of your code, if you even write code anymore and your team's code, is written by AI at this point? I do write code occasionally now, still.

I actually say for managers like myself, it's way easier to use these AI tools than to manually code at this point. And so I know for myself and some of the other EMs, engineering managers at OpenAI, all of our code is written by Codex at this point. But more broadly, there's just so much energy.

There's a tangible energy internally around just how far these tools have gotten, how good codex as it will has gotten for us. And it's a little hard for us to exactly measure how much of the code is written

because the vast majority of it, I say, a close to 100% is usually generated by AI first.

What we do track, though, is at this point the vast majority of engineers use codex on a daily basis. So 95% of engineers use codex 100% of our PRs are reviewed by codex. Daily is also basically any code that goes in a production that's merged in. Codex has its eyes on and suggests improvements, suggests changes in the PRs. And so that's kind of what we're seeing internally.

But by and large, the most exciting is just the energy that there is. Another observation that we've had is engineers who tend to use codex more open way more PRs. So they're actually opening 70% more PRs and then the engineers who aren't using codex as much. And the gap is widening. So I feel like the people who are opening more PRs are certain to learn how to use the tool more.

And so might have actually increased since I last looked at the number. Okay. So just to make sure we hear what you're saying, you're saying all of the code of these 95% Engineers at OpenAI is written by AI. It's written and then they review it. Yep. Yep. It's like crazy that that's almost like not crazy anymore that we're just like getting used to this.

“I think there's still some getting used to to be clear.”

There's also I think some engineers who I think trust codex a little bit less, but basically every day I talked to someone who is blown away by something that I can do.

And kind of like the their bar of trust kind of or like how much they trust the model to do on its own goes up over and over time. And there's a quote from Kevin Whale are a VP of science here. And he likes saying this is the worst the models will ever be. And so this is the worst that the models ever be for software engineering as well. And so over time we just see people trusting it more and more. And then we'll see the models get better and better as well. Yeah. Kevin Whale former podcast guest. He said exactly that line on this podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A few times. Yeah. Peter, the cloudbot/multbot/openclaw is what it's called now developer recently shared that he uses codex for his work. And he feels like anytime it does them, he just trusts that it has done the right job, but he's just like almost certainly could just commit it to master and it'll be great. Yeah. Yeah. He's a great user of codex. I know he's in close touch with the team is a great feedback. I'm not surprised that he uses it. I mean, sorry. It's called open cloud cloud.

Yeah. Great. It is a great product. And then I saw that just more. I mean, this is very recent that this morning. I think the most book kind of like a shared as long as seeing all of the AI agents talk to each other's pretty pretty surreal.

“It's basically hers happening in real life is what it will be. Yeah.”

Yeah. So just like coming back to this crazy moment we are living through four engineers in particular, we've gone from you write every line of code to now AI is writing all of your code. I don't know what job has changed more in the past couple years, like job that we didn't expect to change this much. We're just like the job of an engineer is so different in the entire lifespan of an engineer like in the past couple years. It's now shifted to I don't write any more code. How do you imagine the role of an engineer in the job of a software engineer looks in the next couple years just like what does that job?

Yeah. It's I mean, it's honestly been really cool to see. It's part of where the excitement is because like the job is likely to change pretty significantly over the next one or two years. It kind of feels like we're still figuring things out though. And so there's like this excitement I know, especially from some of the software engineers of like. We're in this rare moment, you know, maybe over the next 12 to 24 months where we'll kind of get to figure things out ourselves instead of standards for ourselves.

In terms of where I see this moving. So I think there's a commenting that everyone's saying, which is, you know, people are generally like I see engineers will be coming tech leads.

They're basically like managers now. They're managing fleets and fleets of agents.

I know many of the engineers on my team basically have like 10 to 20 threads kind of being pulled on at the same time. Obviously not active running codex jobs. But just a lot of parallel threads. They're checking in on what they're doing. They're steering the agents and codex and and and giving it to the back. And so their job is kind of really changed from just writing the code itself into being almost like a manager. In terms of where I think this will go one to two years now. So one kind of metaphor that that I kind of always come back to here is actually from this is from this programming textbook that I write back in college called sick the I don't know if you've heard of it.

In structure and interpretation of computer programs. So S I S I C P. At MIT, it was really popular and it was actually used as the introductory. It was the textbook for the intro programming course for a very long time. And it kind of has this called following. It teaches you programming. It teaches you a dialect of list called scheme. And so he like introduces you to like functional programs like very mind mind opening that way. But the thing that was memorable for me about that book, so I kind of read it in college.

The very beginning of it kind of describes programming as a discipline and draws this metaphor to basically like sorcery. Like it says like software engineers are like wizards and you're like programming language or like incantations and you're like, you know, you're you're saying you're issuing these spells and these spells are kind of like going on doing things for you.

“And the challenges like what incantation do you have to say to make the program do what you want.”

And this book is written in 1980. So this is a little while ago. And I think that metaphor is actually like kind of persisted over time. And I think it's actually playing out as we move into this new era of vibe coding or just like what software engineering will look like. Because programming languages were basically these incantations. They've changed over time.

And the challenge is always and and the trend has been that these you've been easier and easier to kind of get them the the computer to do what you want to be a programming.

It is now literally incantations because you can tell you know you're you can tell codex you can tell cursor exactly what you want to do and then it'll go do it for you.

“And I particularly like the wizard and like the the source analogy because I think our current status is starting to move towards kind of like the the sorcerers apprentice you know from Fantasia.”

We're Mickey Mouse is like you know he finds the sorcerers had any tries to do all these things and I think it's a really apt analogy because one is just it's really powerful now these incantations you can do can is extremely high leverage. But you kind of have to know what you're doing right like and sorcerers apprentice the whole plot is like Mickey goes wild the the rooms like go crazy and everything's flooding. I think he literally sets the like sets the the rooms off on a task and then goes asleep.

And so you know it's like vibrating at its at its greatest. And then eventually the the old sorcerer comes back and like cleans everything up and you know when when I see engineers kind of like doing these these these these 20 different codex threads at a time. I think it's really skill and there's some seniority and like you know a lot of thought that needs to go into this because you want to make sure that the the models aren't going off the rails. You definitely don't want to just like completely go away and and you know like ignore ignore the thing.

But it's also extremely high leverage like you know a very senior engineer who's who's really prolific proficient with these tools. But it can now just do way more things via what they're doing and I think it's also what makes it fun like it literally feels like we're wizards not you know feels like we're closer to to having. To making making it feel like it's like magical experience where we're you know casting all these spells and having software do all these things for you. I was thinking of the sorcerers apprentice exactly as the metaphor as you were describing that some glad you went there.

“A previous podcast guest described as you have a genie that you can that grant you wishes and it's a useful frame because you have to be very clear about the wish you want.”

Like if you want to be big yes I'll take it. Or might be like the monkey's pod type thing where you know it's actually caught what you want but what are the effects. Yeah yeah I think that and the analogy is great and yeah the crazy thing for me is just a staying power of that book sick be like it's called the wizard book you know people call the wizard book because that is the metaphor that they kind of weave throughout the book and.

Where we basically reach that point now which is which is which is really cool.

There's two kind of threads I want to follow here one is I've been hearing more and more there's this like stress that people feel when their agents aren't working. Do you fire off all these you know codex agents and then you have to keep stand out of them oh shit once that working I'm wasting time do you feel that you feel that across your team at all.

“Yeah yeah I mean it happens all the time and I actually think like that this is where the interesting part of all of this lies right now because these models aren't perfect these tools aren't perfect.”

And we're still trying to figure out how to best interact with these with with with codex or with these AI agents to to get work done. We see this come up all the time there's a particularly interesting team that we have internally so there's a team that that's actually doing an experiment right now.

With an opening I where they are basically maintaining a 100% codex written code base so you know like.

Some you know you'll have the AI right code but you'll obviously end up like rewriting a lot of it and you might need to like double track and change things. But this team is just fully codex build and just like leaning in entirely and they run into the exact problems that you're describing which is like you know their challenges you know I want to get this thing feature built but I can't get the agent to do it. So usually it's going to escape hatch where you know then you're like all right I'll roll it my sleeves I'm like figure it out and then instead of using codex I might use like tap complete and cursor and and things like that.

But this team for the experiment this team doesn't have that escape hatch and so then the challenge like how do I get the the the the agent to do this and. I actually think we're going to be publishing a blog post from some of our learnings here but a lot of fascinating like paradigms and best practices are falling out of this. One interesting thing that we've noticed I don't know if this is what you kind of feel that we definitely feel it here is a lot of the time when the coding age is not doing what you want.

It's usually problem with context and just like information that you've given it it's just you either on their specified or there's just not enough information around how to do something available to the agent. And so when when you have to solve it through through that the challenges then to to add documentation and actually work around this this limitation and basically encode more tribal knowledge in your head somehow into the code base either via you know code comment itself or code structure itself or via text files like you know dot md files skills any type of additional resources within the repository so that the model can.

Can better do its task there's a whole bunch of other learnings from this this group which I think is fascinating to to explore but yeah kind of giving removing that escape hatch of no longer using the AI has allowed them to start piecing the other lot of the problems that. I will have to solve if you really want to lean into agents. Another issue people run into you talking about how people are shipping PRs like crazy a lot more PRs if they're working with AI obviously code reviews becoming a bigger challenge.

Yeah, I mean one thing is code extra views 100% of all of our PRs at this point and so.

“I actually think so one one really interesting thing that's happened is the things that tend to we hand we tend to hand to the models immediately tend to be the things that annoy us or like the most boring parts of software engineering.”

It's also why it's more fun now because we need to do more you know more of the fun things for me speaking more for myself. I really hated code reviews. It was like one of the worst things for me. And then I remember I went my first job at a college it was that it was that core I owned I was working on the newsfeed. And so I owned the code for the newsfeed and so I was a reviewer for newsfeed and it was just like the central piece of code that everyone would touch and so I would just every morning I'd log in and be like like 20 to 30 code reviews and just like oh my goodness I got to like you know get through all of these.

procrastinate and then it grows to like 50 and so there's like a lot of code reviews codeics is really good at reviewing code so actually one thing that we've noticed that five two in particular is gone extremely strongly adapt that is reviewing code and especially when you kind of steer it in the right direction. And so for code reviews yeah we create a lot of PRs but codeics reviews all of them and it makes you know code reviews go from a you know I don't know 10 15 minute tasks to sometimes even just like I've two to three minute task because you have a a bunch of suggestions already already baked in.

A lot of the times people will especially for small PRs like you actually don't even need people to review we kind of trust codex in this way.

The original author kind of website codex it is you know the benefit of code reviews I have a second pair of eyes to make sure that you're not doing anything done codex is a pretty smart second pair of eyes at this point and so. That's something that that we've heavily lean into. The general CI process and like the post kind of push and like deployment processes also been heavily automated the codex internally at this point. If you talk to a lot of engineers that think that annoying most is after you've written your beautiful code like how do you get it into production you know you got to.

You have run through all these tests you had like you know limp errors yeah a lot of code review. There's a lot of automated stuff you can do with codex and so we've actually built some tools internally that that help automate that process automate the lint you know if there's like a link to error it's a very easy codex fix. And then just it could just patch it and then kind of restart the CI process. So all of that is we're trying to collapse as as little work for an engineer as possible which and then the by product of which is.

They can they can now merge and push out a lot more peers codex writing the code codex for being in some code. I'm curious if you're open to using other models to review your models work is that is that a path or is it just it's good enough we don't need anything else. So I will say there's there's only circular thing here and like going back to sources or apprentice like you want to make sure you're not letting the rooms go crazy here. And so you know we were very thoughtful I'd say around which PRs kind of are completely just codex reviewed most people still obviously take a look at their PRs.

And so it's not like it's going to zero it's more like going from you know 100% attention to like 30% attention which which just helps things push through. In terms of like multiple models so we obviously test a lot of models internally and so we have a lot of those.

“We use external models less it's we think it's important to kind of dog food our own models and kind of like get feedback there.”

But you can also you know there are a lot of like internal variants of models that you can use to give you different perspectives here as well and we found that to work quite well. Okay so just to just to make sure we get a like a barometer of today's world at OpenAI in terms of AI and code. Just so I understand and then I want to move on to different topic. A 100% of code across OpenAI is written by codex at this point is that the way to frame it I wouldn't make a statement that 100% of code running a production today was it is written by AI.

And it's kind of hard to to do after be from there but it's the like almost every engineer heavily uses codex in all of their tasks at this point.

And so I you know if I were to guess the image like the vast majority of code at this point is was probably author by an incredible.

So there's a lot of talk and we've been talking about kind of the icy role the work of an icy engineer. There's let's talk about the changing role of a manager especially engineering manager. How is your life as a manager changed with the rise of AI and just what do you where do you think the managers what's the role of a manager in the future. It changed less than an engineer. There's no you know codex for managers just yeah so however I use codex quite a bit for for some of the. Some of some of the kind of more managery tasks that I do.

“I'd say a couple things are are changing there like some trends so I don't think it's changed that much yet but I see trends and I think you play it out you can kind of see where a lot is going.”

I think that that becoming increasingly clear is codex really empowers like top performers to to get a lot like to be a lot more productive and so it really like.

And so I'm kind of noticing this now as well which is like the top performers kind of end up being a lot more a lot more productive and so you see a broader spread and team productivity in this way.

One so one thing that I've always done as a management philosophy is to spend actually the majority of my time with top performers just like make sure they're on block make sure they're happy make sure you know they're they feel productive and they feel heard. And this is even more true in an AI world where you know your top performers are going to just like really be shooting ahead using these tools.

“I think one example is the team that's you know maintaining a 100% codex generated codebase like just letting them kind of rip and see what's happening there is something that's paid dividends.”

So I think that that's kind of one one trend that I'm seeing where you where. Spending even more time with top performers for managers I think is is likely going to continue the other thing is I so this is more an observation but. My senses with a lot of these AI tools available to managers so less like writing code but just things like catchy BT with organizational knowledge like being able to do research and understanding organizational context lot better. Another good example is we're doing performance reviews right now and it's actually really easy to use chat to beat you with internal knowledge hooked up to get hub and like our notion docs and Google Docs.

To give it get a really good sense of what this person has done over the last 12, 12 months and writing a little you know deep research report for it.

“My senses I think managers will be able to manage much larger teams and that's what kind of like how you know like software engineers are managing 20 to 30 codex is my sense of these tools will allow managers people managers to be higher leverage.”

And it will allow them to to manage you know teams of way more than than the current best practice of I think it's like six to eight right for software engineering. You kind of see this applied to you know like the non engineering domains like support or operations where it's like you know previously. I where we're previously like the size of support team might be limited but like as you can pass up more things to agents you can actually do more work and also manage more people this way. I think the same thing might happen for people management as well especially in tech companies.

And we're already seeing this there's some teams where they're EM's managing you know quite a few people and they're doing it pretty ugly because of some of these tools where they can get higher leverage and understand what their team's doing understand organizational context a little bit better and operate in that way.

I love this advice that with the way you described as you've always leaned into top performers and spent more time with them and walk them and make sure they're happy.

The way Mark Andrews and he's just not podcast the way he phrased it is it makes good people better and it makes great people exceptional yeah and what you're saying here is just. Just doing this more and more is probably the right move spending more time with the best people on your team to unlock them make sure they have everything we need. Yeah, a very good example right now is there are I would say like a group of engineers internally who are really codex fields and are thinking through what the best practices are for interacting with this model.

And that is just an extremely high leverage thing for them to do and so just like as a manager I'm just like yeah go explore this you know whatever best practices come out of this you know we we have to share with the org. Well, we'll you know we'll we'll we do all these knowledge sharing sessions will we'll like share documents and like best practices everywhere so things like that just you know elevate everyone. And and so I view that I was like you know another example of this trend that that we're seeing where the top farmers really get exceptional people just like have a sense this is big as changing so much the world is changing.

It's going to be a huge deal. What do you think people aren't pricing in yet into what will change into where things are heading just like what's an example something you think are like okay we're not realizing this yet.

“So well one of my favorite kind of like phrases or like things that have come out of this holy eye wave is is the idea of the one person billion dollar start up I think I should examine if.”

I like I like Sam Sam may have been the first one to say it but it's fascinating to think about right it's like yeah if you know people are so high leverage at some point there will likely be a one person billion dollar start up. And while I think that's really really cool I think people aren't really pricing in the second or third order effects of this and really what you know.

What the one person billion dollar start up implies is that there's you know one person can just have so much more agency and so much more leverage using one of these tools.

That it is just super easy for them to get everything done that they need to for for their business to you know ultimately create something that's a billion dollars but I think there are a couple other implications of this so one of them is.

One, you're just kind of starting to see starting to see this play out in the AI startup scene where software's became a lot more vertical oriented where like these verticals like creating some AI tool for some vertical tends to work quite well because you know you really lean into that particular domain you like really understand the use case for it. And so if you play out AI there's no reason why you can't have like hundred X more of these these startups.

“And so I think I think one world that we might end up seeing happen is in order to enable a one person billion dollar startup there might be like a hundred other small startups building bespoke software that works extremely well.”

To support other types of you know small small one person you know billion dollar startups.

And so I think we might actually enter into a golden age of like B2B SaaS and just like software and serves in general and so I think I think that's that's a really interesting trend to kind of see because as it's as it's really as it gets easier and easier to build software. As it's easier and easier to you know run a company you might actually just end up seeing way more of these these these startups. So the way I I've been thinking about is like yeah there might be one one person billion dollar startup.

There might be like a hundred you know a hundred million dollar startups there might be tens of thousands of ten million dollar startups and as an individual is actually pretty great to have a ten million dollar business like that's like enough for yourself for life at that point and so you know we might really see seeing explosion.

And that way and I feel like people aren't really you know pressing that in.

“There's another kind of like third order effect of this you know and again all of these like as you get to the further and further out predictions I think there's a lot of uncertainty.”

I think if we end up moving to this world where you end up with these like kind of micro companies building software that works for one or two people. We're in the company and are working there. I think the startup ecosystem will change I think the VC ecosystem will change you know might we might end up in in a world where there's just like a handful of big players that are offering platforms and supporting all of these startups but. The types of ventures scale return startups that can really a hundred or a thousand next year your investment might actually an opportunity. If you end up having a bunch of these you know smaller ten to fifty million dollar companies which are not great for venture.

All returns but are great for the individuals the high agency individuals who are now you know really lean into AI to build these businesses for themselves. I love how many order like order effects we've been through whenever you have the fourth order effect now sure I'm just joking.

I can I it's two fourth order is two two is to give a brain for me. I can't I can't think that far ahead.

I'm not going to be a billion dollar startup because I'm not going to be a billion dollar startup because what I'm doing is not venture scale in anyway and not super high leverage but just could see how many support tickets I get from just like the most ridiculous things. One person like I'm bearish on this billion dollar startup I just want to share this thought simply because of the support costs even if AI is helping you at a billion dollars just like unless your ACVs are you know very high and you have very few customers.

The most dealing with support and people are like you know like they can solve their own problems but they're all email support ask about this thing just dealing with that is hard to scale is in my experience so unless you have in my opinion unless you have a bunch of contractors which I don't know is account is a single person company I feel like it's very difficult to scale.

“I think that's true and actually I think my view on it is is slightly different which is I think that your you know Lenny's podcast might not be coming up to a billion dollar startup but what I think might happen is instead of you.”

I think the one person who has to dispatch an AI to solve and fix those support tickets I think what might end up happening is there might be a whole smattering of other startups that are building software and super and like super tailored towards what you might need and so you know there might be like 10 or 20 startups that build support software for podcasts and newsletters and that might be a one person startup like it doesn't need to be a big one. It's and you know they might be able to just code up this product very very easily they're able to kind of build their own thing and because it's so tailored and unique and hopefully you know useful for you and might be something that you purchase as the one person billion dollar startup.

And so that's kind of the world that I think might end up happening again there's like high answer and you know what might play out here but the end result still might be a one like one person driving this like high high massive leverage company that might actually reach a billion dollars.

“I could see that I also think about Peter at clockbot slash mobile slash open clock I've just like how he barrage these right now by all these asks and emails and things and DMs and PRs just like.”

I'm curious just and he's not even making money out this thing.

Yeah I can imagine what it's like to be him right now it's it's like absolutely insane it's probably like. You know like the the months after we launch H.G.B.T. the craziness that was. That was one as one man yeah he's coming on the plot by the way and in a week. Oh I'm excited yeah maybe the fourth order effect is distribution becomes increasingly important because there are so many freaking things trying to get your attention.

“So people with an audience and platform I think become more and more valuable which is good good stuff okay.”

I wanted to come back actually to your management stuff so I really love your insight about spending more time with our performers has been really successful to you.

Just thinking about you as a manager of a team that is building the platform that powers basically the entire AI economy like every AI startup is building on your API.

Clearly you're doing it great job. What are there kind of core management lessons have you learned what do you find is really important and and key to your success as a manager of engineers and just people. I think a lot of the lessons that I've learned here I don't know how specific it is to the opening an API or somewhere enterprise products in particular.

“I think my my management philosophy is obviously changed over time but I think it's probably stayed the same more than it's changed over time.”

What one of these principles is kind of what I talked to you about before which is you know spending a lot of time with with top performers like actually spending.

And like to be very concrete like it's like more than 50% of your time with your top performers with maybe your top like 10% performers and really really trying your best and power them. The way that I think about it is is is is kind of come back to this analogy of software engineer as as a surgeon which comes from the the mythical man month book. So it's actually it's funny so I pull it from the book but in the book they actually describe this world where I think they're like predicting the future because because I think the book was written like in the 70s or something.

They said that software engineering might end up moving into a world where that software engineers are like surgeons or like in a surgery room there's like one person doing the work. And you know there's one person like cutting whatever and like doing all the surgery and everyone else in the room is there to just support them right it's like the nurse and like the assistant but the resident and the fellow. And then the surgeons like I need a scalpel and they give them scalpel and then they're like I need you know this tool and that's machine and they'll bring it over everyone's there to just like you know support the one surgeon.

And so the the the the mythical man month actually predicted that that is kind of the direction that's offering you to go. I don't think that's exactly played out where like you know it's much more collaborative and like it's not only one person doing the work. But I've always really liked that analogy and and and and that analogy is actually what I strive to kind of like emulate in my own management philosophy which is software engineering isn't really like surgery. Where it's not just one person doing work, but the way in which I like treating the people on my team and the way that I act as a manager is I want to empower them make them feel like they're a surgeon.

And in so far at like as like making sure that I'm supporting them making sure they have everything that they need to do their work and it feels like they have an army of people kind of supporting them. And looking around corners and giving them everything that they need when it's really just me as the as the manager and so like the example that I give is is looking around corners and unblocking people especially from an organizational perspective is extremely strong useful. And again going back to the eye conversations even more important nowadays right like if people are just like cranking PR after PR the main thing bottlenecking progress and and you know shipping something tends to be organizational or like process oriented.

And if you as a manager and kind of look around corners and kind of unblock the team if you can you know like if if the surgeon needs scalpel but you know the manager kind of already has a scalpel ready for them that that's the best case scenario that's kind of the way that I approach. Of management and especially engineering management and so that's something that that's really really stuck with me over time and even though you know. Look around corners and predict here this engineer is going to be blocked by this decision we need to figure this out with you again that's actually a really good point I haven't tried this yet but I wonder what happened if I ask.

And I think even more interestingly what do you anticipate will be a blocker for this engineer or this team in the coming months or you ask that you ask the model yes the AI to do the second and third order. This episode is brought to you by data dog now home to apo the leading experimentation and feature flagging platform product managers at the world's best companies use data dog the same platform their engineers rely on every day to connect product insights to product issues like bugs UX friction and business impact.

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That's data dog HQ.com/lany. Okay, I want to shift to talking about the API in the platform that you all build. So you work with a lot of companies implementing your API, your platform building on your on your tools.

“You told me that you find that a lot of companies actually have negative ROI on their AI deployments which I think is what a lot of people you read about and feel and think and it's interesting actually seeing that.”

What what's going on there? What are they doing wrong? What is what's happening in the world of AI and deployments in our way. Yeah, so to be clear, I don't like explicitly see quantitative numbers around this. It's actually really hard to measure these things, but especially from observing some companies trying to do AI. I would not be surprised if a lot of AI deployments are actually negative ROI.

I mean, part of this too is I think there's also general sentiment from folks around the country, like basically outside of tech that AI is being forced onto them.

And I think part of this is is is probably a symptom of some negative ROI AI deployments.

“A couple of things I've observed around this. So one thing is and I think I come back to this again and again.”

Like I think we in Silicon Valley just forget that we live in a bubble like we are so like Twitter's a bubble is our exes a bubble Silicon Valley's a bubble software engineering's a bubble. Most people in the world most people in the US are not software engineers are not very AI-pilled are not following every single model release. And so and so we're just like highly out of the loop on how to use this technology.

And so you know like we we always talk about all these like best practices for codex all these codex built people within open AI.

I'm sure everyone on X2 posts are like crazy power users of these AI tools you know they lean into skills they lean into agents dot MD MCPs. Yes, yeah all all that and when I talked to some of these companies and I talked to the the actual employees using these it's like the most basic thing that they're trying to do and they like have very little understanding of exactly how the technology works. And so that that's that's kind of like one big observation for me which is like. They're asking very simple questions of these things they're really not not pushing it just yet.

“And so that kind of goes back to that's kind of ties into to what I what I think.”

More companies do or like what should do or what what a more ideal AI deployment setup looks like. And and this is kind of how we've run things within open AI too.

The companies where I think it's it started to work really well have a combination of both top down by and so it's like the sea switch like you know we're we want to become an AI AI first company.

So there's buying they buy the tools they have you know exact support but it also has bottoms up adoption and buy it and so what I mean by that is it has like. Actual employees doing the work who are really excited about the technology and are willing to learn evangelize build best practices and kind of like knowledge share within the organization.

But where when it really started taking office when was with the introduction of codex and these tools were like people didn't like actual employees themselves could start applying it to the work.

“And I think you really need this because at the end of the day everyone's work is like very different it's like very unique software engineering different than finances different than operations different than go to market and sales.”

And so there's like a lot of these like last mile intricacies of work that needs to really be done in a bottoms up fashion. And so my sense is a lot of these these air deployments don't have like don't have bottoms up adoption like it was like an exact mandate and it's extremely top down. And it's very divorced from what the actual work looks like and as an result you end up with a giant workforce that doesn't really understand the technology is like I know I'm supposed to use this and maybe it's like on my performance review too, but.

I'm not sure what to do and they look around no one else is doing it there's no one else to learn from.

And so my my you know my recommendation for companies kind of pushing this is find or maybe even staff of full time team internally that is this kind of tiger team internally that can explore the full extent of the capabilities apply to specific workflows do the knowledge sharing. Create excitement within folks who might want to use a technology because in the absence of that it's very difficult to is actually very difficult to pick up and who would you put on this tiger team is it like engineer led you find in your experience is a cross functional sort of team.

Yeah, it's it's interesting because also a lot of companies don't have software engineers and so the pattern of scene is it tends to be these like.

“Software engineering adjacent like basically technical people but are not software engineers I think there's a lot to get tend to get most excited around this it's like you know maybe the.”

It's like maybe the like you know support team operations lead who doesn't code but loves using these tools and you know is like an excel wizard or something. And so it's like technical adjacent or like coding adjacent and like you know pretty technical those are the times it like those are the kinds of people have seen in these companies who just like really light up and get excited around this. I mean you can usually build a team a team around that but yeah it's like oftentimes not software engineers software engineers I think will understand this but not every company has software engineers.

It's actually kind of rarity they're they're they're hard to find their expensive and so it's these other other types of folks what I'm here is the anti pattern is top down this is very the CEO found an exact team just like we are going to go AI first we're going to lead into AI everyone's going to be judged on their performance using AI tools how much your. Productivities increasing things to AI and without without with that being just top down and not creating a team that is bottom up spreading the the gospel you find it doesn't work.

Yeah yeah exactly and the advice is find the people that are most excited and instead of kind of having them spread out through the organization you're what you find works is. Create a little AI kind of evangelist team that yeah finds ways to use it and kind of spreads it across the work. Yeah, I mean another kind of like hearing you you play back to me another way to think about it kind of time back to my own. Imagine a philosophy is find the high performers in AI adoption and empower them you know let them build half of ons let them you know hold seminars do knowledge sharing kind of create the seeds of excitement internal.

Okay, amazing. There's a couple of hot takes I want to hear from you something that I've seen you talk about and share one is.

You've shared that talking to customers and listening to customers not always the right strategy in AI and it might often lead you astray.

“I don't know if it's that hot of the take I think the main thing here is so obviously you should talk to your customers like it's is like useful to talk to customers.”

I just think that AI field especially what I've seen over the last kind of like three years. Working on the API and and seeing kind of all that of all is the field and the models themselves are just changing so so quickly they tend to like disrupt themselves especially around the like tooling and the scaffolding space so. There, there's just quote that I read actually earlier this week from a it's from an ex article as kind of Nicholas who's the founder of a start called thin tool. Where I think he was he was sharing a lot of the best practices that he has learned through building AI agents for financial services I think it is at a start.

I may add this phrase that I thought was really good, which is the models will eat your scaffolding for breakfast like if you look if you're aligned back to 2022 right when Chad Gbt launched. These models are pretty raw and there was like all this product scaffolding and things especially in the developer space to basically try and steer the model and build a scaffolding around it to get it to do what you want. Like agent frameworks there's like like vector stores I think was like really popular back then and just like a whole smattering of tools here and as you've kind of seen the field play out that the models have just changed so much.

I could see a world where at some point you know that's no longer useful.

Where the model can actually you know manage all that themselves or like you know or or there might be you know it's hard to predict like might move on to some new paradigm where you know or any of this file based skills skills type thing. You have literally seen this play out where like the agent frameworks I think are a little less useful now.

“There's a period time like twenty twenty three where we thought vector stores and is is going to be like the main way for you to you know bring organizational context into the models and you need to you know.”

So vectorize and then in bed every bit of your corpus is and then you do all this work to like figure out the vector search to like optimize that to fill out the right information all right time all of that is scaffolding because the model you know was not good enough. There approaches actually to take out a lot of that logic and trust the model and give it a set of tools for search doesn't need to be a vector store you could actually just hook it up to any type of search you could literally be files on a file system like skills.

In agents MD to kind of steer it as well obviously they're still a place for vector stores I know a lot of companies still using it but the the entire scaffolding around that and building an entire ecosystem around that and assuming that the only scaffolding that you need has has really changed. And so tying this back to the like you know it's you know you don't always have to listen to your customers because the field is changing so much at any point time you know a lot of people are kind of in this local local maximum.

And if you just blindly listen to your customers they'll be like yeah I want a better vector store like I want a better I want a better you know agent framework for this. And if you had just kind of only chased down that path it actually would have led you to build something that again is the local maxima whereas as the models get better. We've had to reinvent and kind of rethink the right right abstractions and the right tools and frameworks to build around these models and the cool slash exciting slash kind of crazy annoying part is it's a moving target and so yeah like the current current smattering of tools and frameworks right now.

“We'll likely need to evolve and change pretty significantly over time as the models get smarter and better but that is just nature of building the space I think that's what makes it exciting.”

But it also means when you talk to customers you kind of need to balance the exact feedback that they want with where you think the models are going and where you think things will trend over the next one of two years. It's interesting how this is the bitter lesson is you know this big lesson that AI and ML folks learn which is just like don't the less you over complicate the less logic you add to machine learning to AI the more it'll be able to scale and grow and just like take it all the way and let it just just compute basically just give it more power to get.

There's literally a version of the bitter lesson applied to like building with AI where you know we were trying to architect all this stuff around and turns out the models are just kind of you know you did all the way. And then and honestly like opening AI API team has like been guilty of this where we kind of like took some you know left and right turns when we shouldn't of. But yeah the model still end up models get better and we're all learning the bitter lesson day and a day out.

So what would be the key takeaway for folks building on say the API are just building agents and you know having to build a little bit of surround for now is it just yeah what would be the advice.

“General guys and I've been giving this to people for a while and I think still true today is make sure you're building for where the models are going and not where they are today.”

You know the it's it's clearly moving target and I think a lot of the companies that I've seen start up that have seen really really do well is they build a product for an ideal like type of capability. That is like maybe 80% of the way there today and it like then up you know having a product like kind of works but it's like just almost there.

But then as the models get better you know suddenly it might click and then their product now is incredible because it works you know like.

Maybe like oh oh three at some point to something with 5.1 5.2 suddenly it unlocks it but they're building these products with the like the model capability improvements in mind and with that you end up creating an experience experience that's way better than if you had assumed that it's static in the first place. And so that would be my general advice which is you know build for where where the models are going and not not where they are today you end up building a better products. You may need a you know like wait a little bit but like you know the models are getting so much better so quickly you often don't need a wait that long so it's as full of that thread.

Where are like in the next 6 to 12 months. Where's the API heading where's the platform heading where the models heading as much as you can share I know there's a lot of secrets here that maybe you're more succeeded better you think that people should start to prepare for however much you can share.

You know like how long of a task in these models do 50% of the time 80% of the time.

“I think we're at something like multi hour tasks being able to be done by software engineering cast being able to be done by these frontier models 50% of the time and then I think 80% is something like just under an hour.”

But the the sobering thing about that that chart is they plot all the previous models on this chart as well so you can really see the trend of this that's something that I'm really excited about which is you know I actually think products today. Really optimized for tasks that the model can do for like minutes at a time like even codex and like the coding tools I'd say like.

You know, it's it's in the client you're kind of like seeing it be interactive.

It's really you know quite optimized well for like maybe at most 10 minute type paths.

“I have seen people push codex in a limit until like multi hour long tasks but again I I think that's more of the exception.”

But if you follow this trend like I think like in the next 12 to 18 months we could see models that could do multi hour long tasks very very coherently at some point in my reach like you know six hours a day long task.

Or you kind of like dispatch it and have it do you know do things on on the phone for a while.

The types of products you build around that will look very different you want to give the model feedback you obviously don't want to completely run wild for a day maybe you do. But you probably don't and then the the universe of things you can have the model do really expand so that's something that I'm really.

“Really excited about seeing another thing over the next 12 to 18 months where I think be really cool is permits in the multi model models so.”

And and actually by multi modality I'm mostly thinking about audio here where the models are pretty good at audio I think they're going to get a lot better. At audio over the next six to 12 months especially the likes you know the native multi model model the speech speech ones I think there's also interesting work being done around. New types of models and architectures on the multi model audio side as well. But audio especially in the enterprise and in business setting I think is a hugely underrated domain still like everyone talks about coding it's all text.

But we're talking in audio a lot of the world businesses done the audio a lot of services and operations are done via talking in audio and so I think that that error is going to look very exciting the next 12 to 18 months and I think there will be even more on mock for what we can do with audio models there as well. Amazing so quick summary expect agents and AI tools to run longer to that trajectory to continue to increase and then audio and speech becoming a bigger deal more first party and native and better and core to the experience.

Yeah extremely cool okay I want to go back to one of your hot takes another hot take that I've seen you discuss your big you're very bullish on business process automation as an opportunity in the world of AI talk about that. Yeah this goes back to the thing that I said previously which is we we live in a bubble in Silicon Valley and a lot of the work that we do that we're used to software engineering you know product management building products is very differently shaped than the work that goes on that runs our entire economy.

And I see this in and out when I talk to customers if you talk to any like company that's not based in it's not a tech company there's a lot of business processes and so what I mean that this is is you know I generally delineated as. And there's like like software engineering is kind of like open ended knowledge work right it's and this is why I think tools like codex to be quite quite good because it's exploring and you're giving up these like open ended things but software engineering is fundamentally like pretty open ended and is not very repeatable right so like you build a feature you're not trying to build the exact same feature over and over again.

And a lot of like tech jobs are in the space I think like data science is kind of in the space as well even some of the like strategic finance stuff. But as you move further and further away from software engineering and like what is current check a lot of jobs are just business processes they're like repeatable things repeatable operations that's you know some manager at a company has kind of like iterated on there's usually a standard operating procedure that people want to do. And you don't want to deviate from it that much you know there's like in software engineering the ingenuity is is in deviating.

But a lot of a lot of the the the work being done in the world is actually just running through these procedures and operations like if I you know if I call. A support line they're running through one of these if I call my utility company there's a bunch of processes and things that they can and cannot do for me and so I'm I'm just extremely bullish on this general category of like and and and I think it's underrated because it's so different from what we think about it and so can value people tend to not think about it.

I think it's a really valuable business processes with high determinism that is fully integrated with business data and business decisions and and different systems within an enterprise and how couldn't actually make that that process better because I actually think there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of work to be done in that area.

“And we just we just don't talk about it because it's it's a little bit less in our real house.”

So make sure and fully understand it is you think there's a much bigger opportunity outside of engineering for AI to impact productivity companies and also jobs of these folks that are doing these kind of repetitive easily automated tasks impact jobs and also just impact how work is done like so much of work is done in this way like you think about.

You know like what a basically we I talked to customers all the time big enterprises like how how will AI transform my company like how will it run in in in a world with AI in like 20 years.

And and you know software engineering is part of the story, but there's so much more on the business process side and I actually think it might look even more different on the business process side and and the work there's is pretty substantial. It's actually interesting I don't know like from an absolute percentage or absolutely based I don't know if it's bigger or smaller in software engineering like software pretty huge and pretty expensive as well.

“But it is pretty massive and it's definitely bigger than you know.”

It's it's bigger than you would think it is based off of how how people talk about it or don't talk about it on X or Twitter okay in going in a slightly different direction.

I'm having built a platform building the API people building on API and the biggest question on people's minds as always just.

How do I not have open and I squash my idea and build their own thing and then you know just try this this market I created. What's the general policy with the general philosophy of how start up should think about where open and I is unlikely to go my general answer here is is. The market is so big and so massive like I actually think you know start up should just not overly think about where open and I or these labs are going. I've talked to a lot of startups you know that have you know not worked out starts that are doing really well.

I've seen that is kind of fizzled out is not because opening I or you know big lab or Google or something has has come to watch them because they built something and it like really didn't resonate with with the customers where's the ones that take off. Like even in very competitive spaces like coding like curves are huge at this point and just because they build something that people really love and so my general advice is like don't you know. Don't overly stress about this just build something that people like and you will you will have a space in this I can't overstate how big of an opportunity there is right now like.

The the opportunity space in building with AI so big like a good example this is is like the space is so big that the overturn window of what is acceptable and not acceptable for businesses do has completely changed here. It's like investing in like competitive companies left and right is just like the space is so big because the opportunity is is unlike anything that we've seen before. And while you know that that affects our VCs operate from a start of perspective it's like the most empowering thing in the world because the like even if you just build something that that some people really really love you will you will end up with the massive massive the valuable business.

That's why I tell you like don't don't know what you think about it the other thing like I also think is important to remember at least from an opening I perspective one thing that that that we've always held very near deer which both salmon Greg help you know reinforce from the top as well. Is we actually view ourselves fundamentally as a like ecosystem platform company the API was our first product we think it's really important for us to foster this ecosystem and continue to you know support it and not squash it and so if you kind of look at the decisions we make it this is all we've we've through it.

Every single model we've released in one of our products gets released in the API like even you know we release these codex models now that are a little bit more optimized for the codex harness.

But they always find their way into the API and like all of our you know customers end up using those we don't hold back on any of that.

We think it's really important to keep our platform neutral and so you know we don't block competitors we allow people to have access to our models.

“We also want you know like we've recently been testing more of like the sign in with chat GPT you know product as well and so we we want to foster this ecosystem I think it's really important that we do so.”

The general like thinking about this is like you know a rising tide like lifts all boats and you know we might be a aircraft carrier like pretty big at this point. But we think it's important to raise the tide because everyone kind of benefits and I think we'll benefit as well like our API itself is grown pretty significantly because we we act in this way and so. I really encourage people not to view, oh, hey, is this kind of like you know being that all just shrub people out of the way.

Why why is that important to open AI just this focus on building a platform creating.

“Way for people to build businesses just like is that just that's been the vision for the beginning we want this to be a platform.”

It's been the vision from the beginning it comes goes back to our charter actually like our mission.

So the open is mission has always been to want to build AGI so we know where I was eating that.

But then second things is like spread the benefits of it to all of humanity and there's kind of like a lot of you know. The main part there is all humanity like and obviously chat to you trying to do this you know we're trying to reach however many you know the whole world. But very early on and this is why we we launched API back in like 2020 or something like really early. We don't think we as a company will be able to. Reach all of humanity right like there's I don't know every every corner of the world like like pretty pretty pretty deep.

And so. We actually feel like in order for us to fulfill our mission we need to have some platform. Style thing here where we can empower other people to build you know the customer support bought for podcasters and newsletter hosts because we're not going to be able to do it ourselves. And so we've largely seen this play out with the API. This is why we you know we we we we we talked to so many of our customers and and really you know loves seeing that our Steve of things built on.

But yeah it's been there's to say one because it's it's kind of we view it as an expression of our mission. And you haven't even mentioned the apps or the guys are launching the chat GPT app store. Yeah is is that under your umbrella by the way or is that a different work and team. It's a it's a different team so it's under catchy PT we obviously collaborate very closely with them and you know they built like an apps SDK which is built in close collaboration with 13. But that is more within the catchy BT umbrella but that is also another like that's another example of this right it's like.

chat GPT is like we we we we kind of like have these 800 million weekly active users who are just coming over and over again like.

It's a great asset to have as a business but like man would it be better if we could somehow allow you know other companies to come in and and and take advantage of this as well and and build for this the audience as well. And and then ultimately we think it will help us expand that that that group as well right and so it's all it all kind of comes back to the mission and we find that being a platform being open tends to help here.

“Just that number 800 million I think it's MMAs just like a weekly weekly weekly yeah it's a crazy billion people using weekly.”

It's like it's certainly not how these numbers were just used to now but that's in insane unprecedented. Yeah it's mind bottling for me to think about from a scale perspective. Honestly I in the way thing about is like 10% of the world and growing by the way like it's just it's shooting up. Come to chat GPT and use it every day or sorry every week and this point I just want to double down on this point you're making. Open AI's mission was to make AI available to all of humanity and I think some people just that they're like oh you know cost money and it's like.

Like the fact that it it's there's a free version of chat GPT that anybody can use that is not so different from the most powerful AI model that exists in the world for free.

That's not gated that anyone can use like if you have if you're a billionaire there's only so much more you can get out of AI that what someone you know in a village in Africa can get and and now that's always been really important to open AI.

“Yeah yeah I mean look that that's why I think we've leaned into the health work we've leaned into like like like education is going to be a very interesting here.”

The other insane kind of trend here is is the free model has gotten so smart over time like the free model back in 2022 was you know like well it's good at the time but it's like nothing compared to what you get today because you do be five today. And so the like you know raising the floor across the world is kind of you know something that we're really through trying to do and then we view it as part of our mission. The other flip side of this by the way is like you know kind of talking about like the billionaires or whatever I know people have saying like you're using the same iPhone that like you know Steve or sorry like Mark Zuckerberg's probably using her like the billionaires are using.

Like for like $20 a month you're basically using you know like using the same AI that you know the billionaires are using for like $200 a month. You got the same pro model that you know all the billionaires are using but they're probably not using pro for everything they're probably just using the plus tier ones for their day and day out and so yeah this kind of like democratization and just like. This this benefit like across all of the world is it's really meaningful to us and something that. And so the most popular one that we have right now is one called responses API and so this is an endpoint and it's optimized for building long running agents so agents that will work for a while.

While you can kind of you know pull it to see see what it'll do and then you'll get the model response back at at some point that's like the lowest level primitive that we have. And that's actually what a lot of people use that's the most popular way of building on top of API with that it is like super unampinated and you can do basically whatever you want like the lowest level thing we've also started building more and more kind of like layers of abstraction on top to help people.

“Some of these and so next layer up we have this thing called agents SDK which has also gone extremely popular this allows you to use you know the response API or some other API and points that we have.”

And then I kind of working in a loop it might have sub agents that it delegates to it starts building all this framework all this scaffolding actually and you know we'll see where this all goes. But it makes it a lot easier for you to build these these kind of agents giving it guard rails allowing you to like farm out sub tasks other agents and kind of like orchestrated swarm of agents. The agents SDK kind of allows you to do that and then above that we've now started building tools to help also with kind of like the meta level of deploying an agent.

So we have this product called agent kit and widgets which are basically a bunch of UI components that you can use to very easily build a very beautiful UI on top of either our API or agents SDK.

Because you know a lot of times these agents kind of look very similar from a UI perspective and so there's agent kit. We also have a smattering of like eval's products like eval's API where if you want to test and like you know see if your models or your your agent or your workflows working. You can test it in a very quantitative way using our eval's product and so yeah that I viewed as like these various layers they're all kind of helping you build on what you want with our AI with our models. And with increasing levels of abstraction and and and and and you know how opinionated this and so you can stuff you can do that you can use the whole stack and and it very quickly allows you to build an agents.

I'm or you can go down down the stack as low as you want to the base of their responses API and build whatever you want because of how low local this. Sure when is there anything else that you want to share anything else you want to leave listeners with anything we haven't touched on that you think might be helpful before we get to a very exciting lightning round.

“The only thing I'd leave folks with is yeah I think.”

I think the next like two to three years we're going to be some of the most fun in tech and in the startup world that that will have in a very long time. And I would just encourage people to not not take it for granted like I entered the work force of 2014. It was great for like a couple of years I felt like there was like a period of like five to six years where it wasn't very exciting and tech. And then in the last three years it's been the most insanely exciting energizing period of my career and I think then I suited three years going to be a continuation of that and so.

When Kurt will not take it for granted I'm trying to not take it for granted at some point you know this way is going to play out and it's going to be a lot more you know incremental. But in the meantime we're going to get to explore a lot of really cool things and then a lot of new things and change the world and change how we work and so that's the main thing I'd leave folks with. Another this message I want to spend a little more time on it when you say don't miss it is it what do you recommend people do is it just build lean in learn.

Join a company building really interesting things like what's what's your advice to folks that are like okay I don't want to miss the boat.

Yeah I would just say engage with it so it's basically like what you said lean in.

Building tools on top of this is is part of the you know as part of the story just using the tools like you don't you know you don't need to be a software engineer to lean into this.

“I think a lot of jobs are going to going to change here so just using the tools understanding the limitations of what it can and cannot do so that you can kind of watch the trend of what you can start to do as the models improve.”

And yeah and so it's basically like getting used and getting used to this technology and getting familiar with it instead of kind of like laying back and letting it. On the flip side of that there's a lot of I think stress and just anxiety around like there's so much happening how do I keep up how you got to learn out a cloud bought this week oh god yeah. What is there something you learned about it just not like you're at the center of this. How do you not get overly stressed and worried about missing things that are going on and just key stand top news with what are some things you've done learned.

Yeah so I I think I'm personally a bad example of this because I am I'm basically chronically online on x and our company slack.

So I actually try and absorb I end up absorbing a lot of it. What I will say though she's like from observing other folks were less you know addicted to the stuff like I am. Yeah I a lot of it is noise like you don't need to you don't need to have like 110% of this kind of past your mind like going to your mind.

I think just the combination of like the frenetic pace of the industry acts as a product just creates like this insane kind of like.

“Yeah this insane like pace of of news which is honestly very overwhelming.”

I mean is like you don't need to be you don't need to know all of that to really engage with what's happening right now. And even something in simple is just like install the code X client play around with it install tragedy being connected to a couple of your you know internal data sources notion slack get hub and see what it can and cannot do.

All of that I think is a part of it amazing sure when with that we reached our very exciting lightning round I've got five questions for you ready.

Yes yeah absolutely. First question what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most other people. I'll talk about one nonfiction one and one fiction book. The fiction book was I just finished reading it I it was really I really recommend it it's a there is no anti mimetics division by Q and TM.

“It's a I think it's like an online author but I saw it being shared on X this this it's like a science fiction he kind of book and it was I basically devoured it in like two days.”

It was it's super super well and super fascinating it's about a government agency that's fighting you know things that make you forget it. And so it's just a very nice smart like creative book that that and fresh honestly in terms of like source material that that that I really like so I'd recommend that one the book is also unintentionally hilarious. So like it's like meant to be like this like sci-fi almost like horror solid book but it was it was a maybe laugh a couple times so that's the that's the fiction book nonfiction.

So I'm going to cheat and I'm going to recommend to them so in the last year I've been reading a lot more about China and kind of like the US trying our relations. And I think there are two books that came on the last year that have been you know really really eye opening for me and in that regard. The first one is the Dan Wing book breakneck that one is really really good I really liked his analogy of like the lawyer Lee US is the lawyer Lee society China is the engineering society and their pros and cons to each.

I read it and I was like hmm yeah does does seem like we're run by the lawyers in the US. So that's one and the other one is the Patrick McGee book on Apple and China was super super super interesting. A huge Apple fanboy like if you get to see my desk right now it's all Apple stuff but just like one it was just super fascinating learning about Apple's relationship to China and then too. It's just like had a lot of inside information about Apple as a company that I found fascinating. So it was also quite a page turner and also you know very very timely at timely books.

“And I think that's the answer to my about the book sounds amazing I'm buying it right now as you're talking.”

Yeah, yeah it's like I think it's only like a couple hundred pages I literally finished into the dream it was like so so good. Okay great tip okay favorite recent movie or TV show you have really enjoyed yeah that one's tough because you know with I have two kids and a busy job and so I really haven't had much time. So I'm actually a big anime guy and so I watched a couple episodes that there's a new season of this anime called "Judgesu Kaisen" that's out. So it's season three of JJK was was was really good.

In general I'm a huge fan of Japanese anime I think they create the most novel and unique plots and universes that Western media has tried away from and so generally big fan of that but yeah. It haven't really watched much but so a couple episodes of JJK recently extremely understandable in your role. Yeah favorite product you recently discovered that you really love. Yeah, so so I recently had a setup a Wi-Fi and like home networking and I went all in on ubiquity routers and cat security cameras.

I'd never heard of it before I had to do this I always had a very simple setup and it's just such a well built product.

I don't have a user before but it's basically like the apple of like home networking so beautiful products. But the thing that actually makes it extremely good is that software is good and so they have a really great mobile app to help manage you know all of the home networking. And so basically ubiquity you can use it to buy wireless routers. You need Ethernet wiring throughout your house to use it, but I think what makes it really good are security cameras. So if you have security cameras that are plugged into the ubiquity ecosystem they have an incredible mobile app.

And Apple TV app and iPad app to kind of see the live feed of your cameras and so they're they're they're a little pricey but not that pricey.

But it's been just an incredible product experience.

I went euros so I made a mistake. It's euros are pretty good too, but I know ubiquity fully converted to ubiquity. Okay, two more questions. You have a favorite life motto that you find yourself going back to in work or in life.

There's a lot of things that are going to happen you know at work in life and reminding yourself to never feel sorry and that you always have a sense of agency to kind of pull yourself up.

“There's something that I've had to tell myself a lot and also something that I repeat to a lot of other folks as well.”

Last question. So in your previous life you worked at Open Door where you led work on basically figuring out how much to pay for houses. You basically built the model that told the company here so much will pay for the house. What's like a variable in the price of a house that you didn't expect is really important and impacts the price of a house. There's a bunch that we're surprising all maybe less the couple of most interesting ones. Power lines and like high voltage power lines like our super super actually impact your price quite a lot.

I didn't really fully internalize this until I went to like Dallas and observe like when your house sits next to one of these giant like you know voltage lines is like buzzing and most people have families you know when your kids kind of near there.

“So I think that was one that really really kind of surprised me that makes it.”

Yeah and then the other one which which was something that was always something really difficult for us to quantify was floor plans.

And so it is very important like yes of course it's really important but just like quantifying what a good floor plan is like what a really bad floor plan is like. Like we were doing all these things like how wide is the kitchen and like is it a what solid kitchen is it and then like we're faster bedroom enough and so it was just really really hard to quantify. But I remember floor plan was a big one because like we'd have a home that like wouldn't sell and then our ops team would go in and be like yes the floor plan to shoot.

How could you tell us like you go inside you just feel it feels you know the floor plan to feel it feels off. So yeah those those are ones that were surprising and then the last one that was more impactful than I thought is general like curb appeal and like even like the front door.

“And so I think there's a little book on on this where the front door placement tends to be the highest ROI for homes.”

But just like the feel of like as you walk up to the home as a buyer what year interacting with and the first moments of the house I think was I had underrated hits and parts. That is extremely interesting and I love that you had to figure how to do all this in code and not. Yeah, and then four plans I would bunch of stories around like for floor plans there's like there's like there's like it's not digitized there's like a handful of people who have like paper floor plans of like all these homes and like Phoenix and Dallas.

Yeah, a lot of fun on stories from local nerdies.

Okay sure when thank you so much for doing this this was incredible working folks by the online and and how can listeners be so to you.

Yeah, so I'm online on Twitter on x I'm just at sure when we will and yeah, I mostly just tweet about opening I am API and some of the price that we're launching. And then how folks can be interested can be useful to me I love hearing about things that people are building and so if you're working on a startup if you're hacking on an idea. You know, would love to reach out to me on x. I would love to hear about what you're building and and learn about how open I can help support you amazing sure when thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, lady. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also please consider giving us a rating or leaving review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast.com.

See you in the next episode.