How Braze’s CTO is rethinking engineering for the agentic area
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In this episode of The Stack Overflow Podcast, John Hyman, CTO and co-founder of Braze, shares his journey of leading engineering through two transformative eras: the mobile revolution and the current AI-driven transformation. With over a decade at Braze, Hyman reflects on how his leadership evolved from hands-on technical involvement to guiding a large, divisional organization. He details how Braze rapidly adopted AI across engineering workflows, starting with code completion tools like GitHub Copilot and Cloud Code, and accelerating with the release of advanced models like Opus 4.5. By August 2025, AI had enabled a team to build an MCP server six weeks ahead of schedule, marking a turning point in confidence and adoption. Today, over 60% of code committed at Braze is AI-generated, fueling a self-reinforcing flywheel of velocity and innovation. Hyman emphasizes that AI is not about reducing headcount but amplifying output, enabling teams to tackle more ideas than ever before. He also discusses the emerging challenges of AI inference costs, the need for new standards in agentic workflows, and the cultural shift required to treat AI as a true coworker. Ultimately, he advocates for deep personal engagement with AI tools to stay ahead in the evolving landscape.
AI is transforming engineering from a productivity booster to a full-scale co-pilot, enabling teams to build faster and tackle more ideas.
The shift from code completion to autonomous agents requires new standards, infrastructure, and team structures to manage agentic workflows effectively.
AI adoption is driven by demonstrable results, not just tools—when teams see real wins, adoption spreads organically.
Inference costs are becoming a major business challenge, requiring new metrics and strategies to optimize AI usage efficiency.
AI is not reducing engineering headcount but increasing demand for software, making teams more productive and competitive.
…and 3 more takeaways available in PodZeus
The Evolution of Engineering Leadership at Braze
John Hyman reflects on his 15-year journey at Braze, from startup to global leader, and how his leadership style evolved from hands-on technical involvement to guiding a complex, divisional organization. He emphasizes the importance of being an 'on-the-ground general' who understands the technical underpinnings of the product.
From Code Completion to Autonomous Agents
“We started seeing demand for that over the summer. And we actually said, you know what? The MCP server is something that I'd say is like low stakes. It's a green field. Let's just try and build the MCP server entirely with AI.”
Cultural Adoption and the Flywheel Effect
“The adoption, I think really came from the models being better to the point where it has let us as leaders raise the expectations of what's possible from the team, from AI.”
Measuring AI Success Across Three Warp Streams
“We're realizing just how expensive AI inference is. Ultimately like these models are very good now but they cost a lot of money when especially when people are using them every day as part of their jobs.”
AI and the Future of Product Development
“We're moving from, even from the Figma mock-ups that I thought were incredible of like, wow, we have like a Figma mock-up that I can go through and click a dropdown and then click the next page and that shell works.”
“The world's going to go ahead where all of our teams are going to have agents that are building stuff 24-7, that are responding to bug reports, that are responding to product questions, that are helping build roadmap.”
“People are going to go to sleep and wake up with features being built by AI.”
“I've got way more great ideas than I have people to build them. And in a world in which I had 100 great ideas and I used to only be able to build 20 of them, now I've got 100 great ideas, I can say build 40 of them on my team.”
Host
Guest
Braze
organization
John Hyman
person
GitHub Copilot
product
Cloud Code
product
Ira May
person
OfferFit
organization
Opus 4.5
other
Stack Overflow
other
Cursor
product
Vercel
product
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