Our Guest: Karim Fanous is the Senior Vice President of Engineering at StrongDM, a cybersecurity company, and the writer behind Cumulative, a Substack focused on engineering management, building startups, and how AI is reshaping the craft of software.

Episode Topics:

Why VPE is “people + product + processes” and how breakdowns show up as business problems (growth, quality, churn, GTM).
How “buggy processes” reveal themselves at the exec level through growth stalls, quality pain, churn, and GTM friction?
Executive interview questions that reveal whether an engineering leader can connect engineering to business reality.
The common scaling fallacy: doubling engineers does not double output.
“AI made us faster… not necessarily better”: how AI boosts strong engineers, but used carelessly amplifies technical debt.
Why human review won’t scale in an agent-driven world and why software will need machine verification to move at “GPU speed.”?
Engineering shifts toward architecture, integration, trade-offs, experiments, and validation.
The “10x engineer” debate in the AI era.
AI security risks: non-deterministic systems + autonomous actions require controls beyond RBAC.
Inside StrongDM’s approach on agents treated like coworkers with identities, visibility, and feedback that improves behavior.

Resources:
https://www.cummulative.io/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karimfan
https://www.strongdm.com/
https://www.cummulative.io/p/ai-agents-are-here-security-isnt

https://www.cummulative.io/p/preparing-for-a-world-where-humans

https://www.cummulative.io/p/how-do-you-interview-a-vp-of-engineering

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Karim Fanous - Engineering Management in the Age of AI