Ali Dasdan, CTO @ Dropbox, joins the pod to share insights on the company’s large-scale AI adoption and research as a foundation of successful engineering leadership. First, Ali shares insights on why he continues publishing research despite his role as a CTO and how research / curiosity can drive better trust within your organization. He shares about how his research ultimately guided decision making regarding redrawing Dropbox’s entire architecture and the importance of creating a record of the company’s progression as the rearchitecture occurred. The bulk of the conversation centers around how Dropbox is adopting AI, including tools like Nova and Dash, within both EPD and non-EPD departments. 

In this episode, Jerry discusses key insights on delegating to agentic tools while maintaining high levels of engineering ownership with Ozzie Osman, co-founder @ Monarch. Ozzie shares what it looks to pursue two paths when it comes to AI: agentic-forward and human-orchestrated pipelines. They also cover the specific AI tools that are used in Monarch, including Devin and Voltron; assigning tasks to be AI-first vs. human-led; determining which pieces of customer feedback lead to new features; and common challenges when it comes to AI-generated code and what the human review process for it looks like.