The self-healing systems that SREs have dreamed about for a decade aren't a distant promise anymore — they're already being built, and the biggest barrier left is cultural. 

Dana Lawson, CTO at Netlify, has spent over 25 years in the trenches of developer infrastructure, from sysadmin roots to running the platform that powers 5% of the internet. 

In this episode, Dana makes the case that the SRE/DevOps community's resistance to AI agents isn't really about the technology — it's about identity, control, and the fear of losing the expertise that defined a generation of engineers. She doesn't dismiss that fear. 

She shares a pragmatic playbook for moving through it: start with the low-hanging fruit (flaky tests, dependency upgrades, vulnerability patching), apply spec-driven development to manage non-determinism, and lead your team with empathy and a beginner's mindset. The conversation covers AI's impact on the open source vs. buy equation, what "vibe coding Fridays" looks like at Netlify, and why Dana believes leaders have a responsibility — not just an opportunity — to bring their teams into the AI era.