Loading summary
Transcript53 lines
- [00:00]
A
The SaaS apocalypse or the next era of software if you will. I'm really excited about it and I think Figma and a lot of other SaaS businesses are too because like I've worked in developer tools for a long time and maybe five, ten years ago the estimate of like number of developers worldwide was like 25 million, 30 million, 40 million give or take. I think what's most exciting about this time is that I think it's going to be like a billion, maybe even more than that. I think there's this incredible time that we're moving through of product development and really the democratization of technology. I think the end result is that there is dramatically more software out there in the world and if you're in that space it means it's a gold mine, right?
- [00:47]
B
EVERY is the only subscription you need to stay at the edge of AI. If you care about being on top of the latest models and using the latest tools. You have to subscribe to EVERY to separate out the signal from the noise. Go to EVERY to subscribe today. Matt, welcome to the show.
- [01:01]
A
Thanks for having me Dan.
- [01:03]
B
So for people who don't know you, you are the director of product management for developers at figma and I want to start with, I think the big question on everyone's mind. I, I should probably say I bought a bunch of Figma like probably like two months ago, something like that because there's this whole SaaS apocalypse narrative and what I want to get in detail and get, get into with you, I think you have a lot of stuff to share about AI, AI and product management, all the stuff that you've been doing yourself. But also I'd love to, I'd love to start with what is going to happen to SaaS tools in AI. And I think FIGMA is a really interesting example where there are all these people who are like oh I don't have to use FIGMA anymore. There are, you know, you guys just launched an agent like in your product you also have Figma mcp. So if you're transitioning from, so if you're transitioning from a world where you, you know, there was no AI when FIGMA started to. Now you're a big scaled product and now there is AI. Like how does that work and how are you, how are you thinking about do we open the product up to agents, do we build our own agent, what's working, what's not? All that kind of stuff. I'm really interested in that.
- [02:15]
A
Yeah, I'd love to talk about that today. I think for me, it comes from a couple different angles. I think the first thing is, like, the SaaS apocalypse, or the next era of software, if you will, maybe is more a positive framing on that. I'm really excited about it because I think I've worked in developer tools for a long time, and maybe five, 10 years ago, the estimate of number of developers worldwide was, I don't know, 25 million, 30 million, 40 million, give or take. I think what's most exciting about this time is that I think it's going to be a billion, right? Like, maybe even more than that, right? And so, like, I think there's this incredible time that we're moving through of product development and really the democratization of technology. I mean, there's a lot of catchphrases around, like, homegrown software, and, like, we can talk about some of that stuff later. But I think the end result is that there is dramatically more software out there in the world. And so, kind of coming back to your point about, like, the SaaS apocalypse and like, what does that mean for companies that have an established product is like, if you're in that space, like, it means it's a gold mine, right? That. That there's all this opportunity out there and that I'm really excited about it. And I think, you know, Figma and a lot of other SaaS businesses are too. And so I think the other part, you know, kind of to more of the negative sentiments of the discussions you see online is around, like, well, what if I could just vibe code every app, right? And I think what's really interesting about this time is, like, for whatever reason, like, January of this year was like, the point at which it became the larger narrative. Like, I've been doing this stuff for, like, probably 18 months or two years. So, like, I was already like, yeah, let's go build everything. But I feel like the whole world's cut up in January of this year. And I was like, yeah, let's go build everything. And, like, people are. And I am excited to see what happens because, like, I know my own personal journey through that is, like, it's really fun to build the initial version of it, right? And, like, I actually built one of my own agents two years ago, and the very first one was like, an email agent. And I had to look back as, like, how it started, and it was like, literally this, like, terrible Python script. And it kind of was rickety and sometimes the replies didn't work. And I was like, okay, but like. And like, the larger narrative here is like, Software companies builds more than just like code, right? Like, there's a reason that I pay for Gmail to like operate my email. It's like, it turns out it kind of stinks when you're like, the SMTP version needs upgraded and you're like, I don't care. Like, I just want to receive email. And so like, as I've had to run my own agents for my personal life, like, I've had to experience that pain of like, the product I want doesn't exist and I built it and now I get the ongoing cost of it. And like, I'll be honest, I'm buying more software these days than I ever did before because I'm like, you know what, that, that tool seems cool. Like, I'm just going to pay somebody else to run my agent for me.
- [04:46]
B
I totally agree. As someone who has Vibe coded my fair share of tools, A, yes, the personal maintenance, but B, I Vibe coded tools that we release into production. And let me tell you, it's not, it's not as simple as saying like, fix this bug. And I do, I do think that's something that is really missed in the SaaS apocalypse discourse. I gotta say though, if one of the first things you did was an email agent, I'm super curious how you're doing your email right now because I feel like things just got to a point where you can kind of just do your email without doing your email. And I'm so excited about it.
- [05:27]
A
Yeah, I can tell a little bit more about the story. So the problem that started two years ago as I was using chatbots at work, because at that point that was kind of the primary interface agent usage was not really thing yet. And so my, my, my personal life, like I have kids in three schools and if there are any parents out there listening, you know what it's like to get the PTO emails and the like, what is the, what's the theme for today? And like, you know the feeling of like a missed, like that this is like the worst parent feeling in the world. But like if you missed the spirit day because your kid didn't do crazy hair day, like, you feel like you have failed at life. I will tell you that. And having done it more than once. And so I was like, I can't, I can't miss another one. And I was like, you know what? I have, I have. And it was because I had to track, you know, 15 emails a day. Like, you think we produce a lot of email in corporate America, Wait till you get to the PTO emails you get at school. And so I was like, you know what, I can't read all these, but who can agents. And I was like, why can't I just do this? And you know one of the major, many agent platforms out there and I was like the missing part here is like I just want to hook it up to email. And so the very first, first version of it was just literally like grab an email inbox, look for the top email and literally paste it to like one of the LLMs and like dump the response back. And I know you like to talk a lot about prompts and like my favorite prompts in those days was basically like forward the email and it would just be extract the facts. And it was always shocking to me that I would send like a multi page email and get like three bullet points back.
- [06:50]
B
That is. Yeah, I remember those days like the, the wiring up and the copy and pasting and I feel like that's so far away. But it's only like a year or two ago.
- [07:00]
A
Yeah, well, and then like you know, to your point about agents, so then I've added a memory system, right. Because like to your point I've like haven't fully automated and like not sure that I trust it to reply on my behalf. But like having the memory system was like a total unlock. And like now how I've evolved it is like I have a daily. So like this is an interesting thing, like openclaw, I feel like hit on this. But like the proactive part is I think the thing that really like set it on fire. And my version of that was like I would have my agent like take a summary of all that stuff and send me an email every day at a certain time. And like the unlock for me was like instead of having to go to a tool and ask for the thing, like it was just like it would show up now. Not that it was particularly smart, it would just do at the same time every day. But like I think where agents are going it's like much more proactive. And then like you know, thinking about like do I need to reach out and contact my owner and let them know what's going on?
- [07:47]
B
So if, if that was the like where you were a couple of years ago, like what are, what are the, you know, what are the workflow things that you have now that you rely on that you're excited about? So it seems like there's some sort of brief functionality you're using in open cloud, but what are a couple of things that you've Been tinkering with that you like?
- [08:05]
A
I think one of the things I'm trying to figure out in my work life is around summarization. I think part of the job is understanding an immense amount of information and then figuring out how do I filter that information and how do I imbue my agents with that skill of this is the thing that matters and this doesn't. And then it's actually a really hard problem because there's a lot of stuff that you read and the first pass you're like, oh, that doesn't matter. And then it will matter like three days later. And it's like, how do you describe which things matter and which things don't?
- [08:35]
B
It also feels like the agents are a little bit like, you know, one of the things I will have it do is go through all my meetings and like all the meetings in the company we recorded, all in notion. So I can have Codex just like go through all the meetings and be like, here's all the stuff that you might be interested in. Which is really cool because I can be in all these meetings that I'm not in. But then it feels like if it gives me stuff that is not quite right and I tell it, it's not quite right, it overcorrects, and it gives me all of the things that I said I wanted, but, like, way too much and way too literally, you know, and it's just like you're never quite. It's never quite right somehow in. In. In this weird way.
- [09:11]
A
Yeah, I was curious to see where you're at on that because, like, I. I feel like this is like one of the unsolved problems at this point. It's like, I think we're all kind of grasping for like. Like you said, I guess you mentioned, with the email and your inbox, have you fully automated it. Does it reply on your behalf or do you approve every reply or what does that look like?
- [09:29]
B
I have to approve every reply, but basically what I do is in Codex, I have a little app that I open in the Codex in app browser and the app runs locally. And basically every day it just sweeps through all my emails and then gives me a list of every email is on that page and there's a draft that it has said. Here's what I'm going to probably try to reply to. And because it has access to my computer and everything, if it's an email from my lawyers or whatever, it can go and search and be like, here's basically what I think I should say. And then I Just scroll through and talk to it. We have this tool called Monologue. So I just monologue into it and just say, no, go fix this. Or, yes, you can send that draft or no or whatever.
- [10:15]
A
And.
- [10:15]
B
And I. I've been at Inbox Zero for like, four weeks straight. And that is like a huge. I've never. It's never happened before. My assistant is like, what the fuck is going on here?
- [10:28]
A
I will fully admit I am part of the religion of Inbox Zero. So I've been running it for many years and I believe in it, but it sure does take a lot of work. I'd be curious about the monologue thing. Do you actually talk to it or do you type to it? Yeah. Does it know video, or is it only just the audio?
- [10:43]
B
It's only audio right now.
- [10:44]
A
Yeah. That is one. Again, hidden tips for, like, most people. Like, the audio unlock is huge. And, like, one of the things that I've learned about it is, like, it's kind of weird to talk to your computer. And so, like, my trick for that is, like, actually use loom a lot because it feels less weird to pretend like I'm screen sharing to somebody. And that allows me to, like, actually talk through the problem.
- [11:03]
B
That's so funny, huh? Like in the office.
- [11:08]
A
Yeah. Like, I feel. Well, I guess I do it from home mostly so people don't hear me talking to myself. But, like, even in the office, I feel like people aren't, like, they'll just think you're on a zoom or something.
- [11:15]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There. There's always. There was this, like, barrier at some point. Now everyone in the office, I just assume they're not talking to me. I assume they're talking to their computer. So it's like, weird when they're talking to me.
- [11:26]
A
What a world we live in. What a world.
- [11:29]
B
But I think that it's. It became this. This, like, social thing where you kind of like, you can see, are they looking at their computer, Are they looking up? Or like, there's also, like the whisper, you know, just like. They're just like, getting kind of close to their computer and they're like, I want you to, like, do this little thing and you're like, okay, I know what's going.
- [11:49]
A
But it's like twice as fast. I forget what it is. I don't know. It's like roughly twice or three times as fast to talk than type.
- [11:54]
B
And like, I've got, you know, carpal tunnel and shit, so it. It doesn't aggravate my hands as much. It's much more ergonomic. So, yeah, I. Huge, huge unlocked use voice. I do want to get back, though, to the. The original thing that we were talking about, which is. Okay, let's just say I think we're on the same page. SaaS apocalypse, not a thing. Actually, making a piece of Sass software that works all the time is a gigantic effort that only some people want to do and other people just want to pay for. But then let's dive more distinctly down into Figma land. So, you know, there. There are questions about, in a. In a design world, what kind of do I want to just chat with my landing page and move things around that way, or do I want to be on the infinite canvas? And I know internally, like, pretty much all of our designers, they're super AI pilled, super early adopters, and they're all like, yeah, like, the, you know, typing is good for a first pass, but, like, to actually get the details right, I need to be able to, like, move stuff around. So in the design world, how does that change? How do you think that changes the product strategy when the possibilities for how you might design something have changed so radically?
- [13:20]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot to unpack, and I think we're in the early innings here and we're kind of figuring it out. I think we're still in kind of this hangover of the text box rules. I think so much of us are defaulting to chat as the experience for Generative ui, and I feel like we're starting to enter the second chapter of that of, like, what does it mean? And, like, that's part of the reason I'm so excited about our agents launch. Like, we've had it internally for a while, and for those who haven't seen it yet, it's the ability to use an agent directly on the infinite canvas. And I think going back, it's funny about, like, what's old is new again. Like, there's a lot of, like, this happening throughout LLM and ML land of, like, we've reinvented evals and it's like, okay, well, we had unit tests before and it's like, well, we've reinvented, like, prompting and we, like, we had user input before and it's like, okay. And design in the new, like, AI era is still, like, the principles still matter, right? And so, like, one of the principle core principles of design for me is like, the. The diamond. And so, like, there's this idea of, like, divergent thinking and then convergent thinking and like, most design problems are like. And, like, this is the idea behind brainstorms. And when people tell you, like, don't ever, you know, shoot somebody's idea down. Like, brainstorming is all about just, like, generating ideas. And one of the things that I don't think we fully unlocked yet from these new capabilities is the ability to supercharge generative thinking. I think oftentimes we get stuck on our own life stories and lived experience, and we approach a problem from a certain angle. And this is what's so valuable about having teammates. You go to talk to your teammate, and they have a totally different starting point, and the answer to this problem is different. And the creativity comes between the conversation between the two of you of, like, oh, I hadn't thought about it from that angle. That's interesting. Let me take it and then build on top of that. Right? And so, like, going back to the, like, what does this mean in this new AI world if we get outside of the text boxes? Because I think text boxes are super limiting, and it's very much like a linear, like, well, this and then that and then this. If we get to the canvas and you have the ability to, like, have some of those same kind of concepts, but the agents allow you to do divergent thinking, that it's like, hey, like, I have this frame. Let me start here. It's like, hey, I think it should be grayscale. And then you have another frame. You're like, well, let me try sepa. And then it's like, oh, the SIPA thing is cool. But, like, the type is wrong. And it's like, oh, let me try that now. It's like, the accessibility is off. Let me duplicate the frame and try again. And even that is still, I think, early innings. That's very much the human driving the input. And you kind of have talked about the proactive flow. And it's like, I think we're starting to figure out what if we had an agent that's like, here's a bunch of frames that I threw on the canvas. Your job is to push them, try different directions, or don't just double down. But then I think there's a separate set of agents that it's like, okay, we have 25 frames on this canvas of concepts for a new marketing page. And then it's like, how do I channel them down? Then there's a convergent agent that's like, okay, these three are kind of like this, and these are clustered around this. And I think. And you can ask it for its Opinion, pretend you're a customer clicking through this. Which one makes the most sense? Right? And so I don't think we've really tapped all of that stuff yet. And so I think even the best agents, like the command line agents, don't have the ability to do those workflows. And so that's kind of where I see the future of design and product thinking.
- [16:29]
B
I think that makes total sense. And yeah, it seems like from what I can tell so far, the agents are really good for. I already have a design system. I need a new landing page. Get me a landing page in the design system. I already have kind of thing which, to be honest, a lot of designers don't really want to have to spend time doing the nth landing page or the nth graphic for this post or whatever, which is more convergent and a little bit less divergent. What about the future of maybe Figma design tools or just generally software with allowing external agents in versus building your own agent or having both, which you all do have? How do you think that works?
- [17:22]
A
I mean, I think we embrace both, right? And I think this is like, I think design workflows are different than engineering workflows, but like the lines are blurring. And so I think in the future we're going to be all builders, right? And it kind of comes like, which perspective are you coming at the problem from? And so we definitely very much support third party agents today. And like our answer for that is our MCP server. Right? And so I think one of the nice things about MCP is it allows a standardized interface across all these different kinds of tools. We think about the problem in two directions. We think about it as code to design. So it's like, okay, in that scenario you just said that's a pretty common thing. You're like, hey, I have a sign up page. But it doesn't support gdpr. Most people are not going to be like, you know what I should do? I'm going to start with a greenfield page and reimagine what our sign of flow should be to add gdpr. Most people are trying to get their job. It's like you log in on Monday morning, you're like, okay, I just got to get this thing done, right? And like, let me add the checkbox here, right? And so for that workflow, it's like if you are comfortable in Codex or Claude or Windsurf or Cursor, you pull up your code base, you fire up the MCP server and you ask it like, hey, can you copy? Like go to this page, like, fire up the dev server, go to this page and copy it into Figma Canvas and it will actually do it. Like that's one of the releases we had earlier this year, which is like a little bit mind blowing that agents can do this faithfully, but it turns out they can. And now you have just removed all that drudgery and you've got it into a medium where you can actually interact with it. It's like, okay, let me go move things around very precisely with the direct manipulation tools that most people are comfortable with. And then the other kind of workflow that we think about is like, okay, now that we've got the design, take that design and bring it back to code. And so we've got a tool called Git Design Context which takes a Figma design, wraps up all the different properties and like components that you're using as well as like any other kind of guidelines you've provided in your design library and provides it to the agent. And again, it's kind of like magic. It's like the agent will be like, okay, cool, let me like look at your current code base. I'll make a branch, create a pr, make the changes, and then like you can ask the agent be like, okay, take me a screenshot and put on the pr. And then like your job is like kind of like what you're talking about your workflow earlier with the email. It's like you don't merge it, but you're like, okay, well I've got a good starting spot, right? And then it's like you can come in there and then riff.
- [19:35]
B
What have you learned about what makes for a good internal agent experience? Internal to a product that you may not have known before Figma agent?
- [19:45]
A
I don't know. That's an interesting question. What would make it a good product? I think this is very specific to figma, but the context and personalization matters in other products like I've worked on in the past for AI companies is personalization is often the last thing you get it just working for everybody first. But I think the thing that really differentiates an okay agent to one that people really love is the personalization aspect. We talked about memory as a form of it in these third party chat agents. I think for figma's version of that, it's the design system that it's like if you have assistant, but without the concept of, well, this is how we structure our designs, how we put them together. The designs that IT create just aren't usable from that perspective.
- [20:31]
B
I don't know what your plans are for FIGMA and being a proactive agent, but I'm curious to the extent you have those plans and those experiments, how that's working. Obviously we've talked about that being kind of hard to get, right?
- [20:49]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think that's where the future is going. If you look at how agents have kind of evolved. Um, I will say we've got a lot of things cooking internally. Um, I don't know, can't talk about specifics too much. Um, I definitely think this is an area we want to head. Right. And so, like, I think I can talk about the problems that we see today. It's like if the amount of software is like really exploding in the world, one of the bigger challenges then becomes like, okay, well like, how do you make sure that it's like, consistent with your values? Right. And so like, I think, and like we become the bottleneck then, right? It's like, we only have so many human eyes to review all of this work. And so it's like, how do we provide a solution that allows people to make sure that they can continue to innovate at the speed that these agents create, but also maintains their values.
- [21:34]
B
What has been the transition, like internally in figma in terms of your own workflows in the engineering Org, in the product org, in the design org, from a pre AI world to now?
- [21:49]
A
So I joined in January and I would say even in that period of time, it's been like kind of night and day. Like, I think folks in January were kind of experimenting with these new ways of working and across all the functions. Right. Like, I think probably engineering was leading the way, as they do in I think most of these cases. But I'll give you an example on the product Org. So like, we had an offsite. I think you might have actually come by, yeah, fairly enough. It's like small world. I think one of my favorite memories of that offsite is that we have a product operations team and they had put together what we call PMOs. And to take a step back for a minute, one of the unlocks to me about AI is you kind of realize every problem becomes a context problem. And it's like, then the work becomes about framing the problem with the right set of information. And so our product operations team is like, huh, A lot of the work that we do is like in structured data as a pm, and it's like, why don't we aggregate that all together? And it's like, okay, let's get a copy of the org chart, we'll throw that in a SQLite table and put it in the file system. And then it's like, okay, why don't we create a connector to Asana? And then we'll connect Slack and then we'll connect GitHub and a few other things, right? And then the real insight was like, skills had really taken off at this point. And it's like, okay, the magic sauce here is like, one of the skills that I really like is this onboarding file creation. So when you add a new team member to your team as a manager, we gotta customize. Okay, here's the channels you should know, here's the people you should know. And it takes a lot of that knowledge that I would have previously said was entirely in my head. But then you start to look at how, if you shape the context, right, that data was actually already there. I already had the org chart. And it can walk the org chart and figure out who's the team and who's the trifecta on the product engineering design side for this new team, you just have to identify, here's the new person, here's the team they're going to join. And it's like, okay, and then I can do a bunch of research. And then it goes into Slack and it figures out the channels. It's like, oh, this team is probably these three channels. And then it reads the last 30 days of content and then it's like, here. And then it goes and checks the Asana board and finds all the projects. And so like, it comes back and you're like, oh, this is like uncannily good. It's like, yeah, this is a pretty good starting spot.
- [24:01]
B
That's one of the things that I think it's weirdly the. It's weirdly I think the thing that made Claude code so good is. And is the thing that makes codecs so good right now is everyone tried to start with agents that live in the cloud and are always on, but then you have to manually connect them to everything. And Claude code is just. Yeah, no, it's just an agent on your computer has access to everything that you have access to. And then that just totally changes all the stuff it can do because it can get all the context it needs. And same thing with Codex. Like, I can just ask a random question to Codex. We just published an article today, and I was like, who should I send this to? And it just went through my emails and my texts and I didn't even know it had access to any of that it just found five people that I probably would have forgotten about, but that I should have sent it to and I did. That's the sort of magical thing that's starting to happen now. That was very. I think the technology, AI itself, if you gave it all the context, would have been able to do this for a while. But it's only now that it's in the right harness and form factor and it can do it a little bit more independently than it was able to before.
- [25:12]
A
Yeah, I'm going to put a plea out there. Like, I remember WWDC, it was like 24. I can't remember when it was like Apple Intelligence. Whenever the headline wwdc.
- [25:22]
B
I think that was more recent. I think it was 25.
- [25:24]
A
Was it 25? Gosh, again, a high time. Who knows what year it is? I upgraded my phone. I was like, all in. I upgraded my iPad. I was like, I'm going to get. Because like I just upgraded the last cycle and then they're like, well, you need a new processor. I was like, okay, up to all my stuff. Solid wwdc. I was like, this is great because like they had this concept of like our phones have all of this personal data. And I was like, oh my gosh. I was like, this is going to be it. And then like, I will say, like, I'm really hoping WWDC this year is actually it because like, you know, this past year and whatever has not been hit right? Because like to your point, the technology's been there. The part that's missing is the tie it all together and the mobile phone ecosystem has all that content. And so I'm waiting for the thing where it's like the always on Siri that runs in the background and is actually smart rather than the one that's like, what was that? I didn't understand you, Matt.
- [26:11]
B
One day, do you think they're going to be able to get that right? And if they don't, do you think it matters?
- [26:19]
A
I think it still matters because I think even them being late to the game, they are still the king of context. Right? And I think that's what's been interesting to watch about like Google IO too. This year is like seemingly Google has also like kind of woken up to that, that like they don't maybe have as much data as Apple, but like they have a lot. And it seems like they're now starting to marry their AI products. If you can keep all the names straight. Like, like, I saw this great tweet that was like, is it Bard Or Gemini Pro or Spark or like, like whatever the thing is, there's some, I think it's Spark is the product that is supposedly going to be the always on agent that is auto connected to all of your Google content. And so I'm waiting for the day that it like runs my inbox for me. I get to inbox zero.
- [27:01]
B
Yeah, I think I just have this feeling about Apple that, you know, like when OpenClaw took off, everyone started buying Mac Minis and you're just like, that's such a good business. Like they didn't have, they don't have to even be in the AI race because they win by default because it's the thing that everyone runs the AI on. And so even if they're behind on Apple Intelligence, which they are, and historically like their software products have been kind of lagging behind their hardware because their hardware is so good, it doesn't matter. They have a lot of time to catch up.
- [27:34]
A
Yeah, well, and I think their strategy is very smart. Right. It's like at the privacy play. Right. Like, and I think like it is scary to upload all of your information to like the cloud. And so like I do think they're in the game and like I really am hoping that they something interesting this year.
- [27:49]
B
So if we, if we sort of look back over the last year there's been this like big sea change in how we build stuff, how good the tools are and then maybe correspondingly like how software works and how we build software and all that kind of stuff. What do you expect or what, what are you planning for over the next year as the capabilities increase both in how you make stuff and what you make?
- [28:17]
A
I think the big thing this year will be about the like how do we review better. I think that's where the bottleneck is now, right? That it's like, I think we have agents that are capable of producing all this stuff. They're available enough, they're cheap enough and now we're just being inundated with all of this new content and I think people are getting kind of overloaded of like, well, what do I do with all of this? It's not just like summaries of stuff that's been out for a while, but now it's like, okay, this is net new content that it's like, do you want me to go or not? And I think we have to solve the problem of how do we scale, like I said, kind of our value system of how do we evaluate that this new thing that we're creating is actually. And then feel confident and have enough trust in it that it's like, it can go to some degree in auto mode, if you will.
- [29:05]
B
Do you have any inkling about how that will work inside of Figma or what the. What the. What the interesting design considerations are for that kind of flow?
- [29:16]
A
And I think that's like one of the problems that we're really focused on is like, talking to customers, understanding like, I think a lot of customers and us are figuring out at the same time. Right. That it's like, I think the industry is in general trying to understand, like, what is the new. Like, is it a video walkthrough that's recorded? Right. Or is it like screenshots? Or is it like another agent that's like, with a different prompt that reviews the work and then you trust this agent so much that you approve its decisions? I don't know. It's hard to predict the future, especially at this time.
- [29:46]
B
Yeah. One last question for you. So I feel like there's been a lot of back and forth over the last year or two about is there a future for PMs, is there a future for designers? And if you want to be a pm, how do you break into the industry now? Because, you know, it's maybe there's fewer. There's fewer PM seats or engineers don't need PMs. How do you think about the career progression for a PM and how someone who's not senior become like, gets to where you are.
- [30:21]
A
Yeah, that's an interesting one. I think the fundamentals still matter, right? Like, I think. I think the best analogy I've seen is like, I mean, there were. There was math class in school, but you still had a calculator. But at the same time, we all learned long division and how to do that. And I remember integrating and taking derivatives and the rest of that. And do I do that on a daily basis now? Absolutely not. But I think it's incredibly important in order to drive these systems that you have an understanding of what these concepts are, be able to do it by hand. And so I think that the foundations still matter. And I would be really curious actually at this point to see what CS classes look like. What is a 101Cs class? Because I think there's two parallel worlds. There's one where it's like, oh my gosh, you can just dump your answer or question into ChatGPT. And it's literally, here's the bubble sort for you. Which of the 42 ways do you want it? And then there's a version of that where it's like, I'm a really curious person. I wrote the bubble sort in C, but take it, put it in an assembly, and then explain it line by line to me and, like, explain, like, what a register is and, like, what is L1 cache and L2 cache and, like, the rest of it. And, like, I think being a curious person, I guess, yeah, maybe this is the answer. I. I think the most important thing is to be a curious person, right? Because, like, I think with these new tools, the people who, like, cannot leverage them are the ones that just kind of, like, accept the output. And the people that, like, are able to, like, invent the next set of tools and, like, really get. Drive the tools to their maximum are the ones that are, like, pushing the Boundari reason, understand how it's put together. And in order to be able to do that, you have to be the curious person. Like, you can't have been the one who's like, answer this problem for me. Right? And just give me the answer. You, like, have to be that curious person to be like, how is this thing put together? And, like, how does this actually work? And, like, help me understand the next level. Right.
- [32:11]
B
I agree. And it's. It's so much more fun to live that way.
- [32:14]
A
Totally. I mean, it's like catnip for me. It's like. I remember it's like. Because it's like, kind of like if. I don't know if you're a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy person, but, like, I feel like LLMs are the book. It is literally the manifestation of it. And you can even have them on your. I have this. When I go on airplanes. I don't run a lot of local LLMs, but I'll download an 8B model and run it on an airplane. It's literally that. It's like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Or it's like, you can ask it a question of why is the sky blue? And it breaks it down into the refraction and all the rest of it. And you're like, well, what is a squirrel? And it will give you an answer of that. And so it's like. And they're not perfect, and some of them are a little weird, especially at the 8B size. But I don't know. It's like, it's a magical time to be alive for, like, curious people, I'd say.
- [32:58]
B
I totally agree. Matt. It was a pleasure.
- [33:02]
A
Thanks. Oh, my gosh, folks, you absolutely, positively have to smash that like, button and subscribe to AI and I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard, but instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated, knowled bombs. About Chat GPT Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat, craving for more. It's not just a show, it's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So do yourself a favor. Hit like Smash, subscribe and strap in for the ride of your life. And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely, hopelessly in love with you.