StaffEng

How BabyList Accelerated AI Adoption in Engineering with Karynn Ikeda


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Hosts: Alex Kessinger & David Noël-Ramos 

Guest: Karynn Ikeda — Former Engineering Manager → AI Enablement Program Manager at Babylist @ktikeda

Karynn Ikeda shares the full arc of how Babylist adopted AI across its engineering organization — from a six-week Windsurf pilot on a single team, to company-wide Claude Code adoption and a bold initiative to onboard product managers and designers into the codebase. She discusses leadership buy-in, measuring developer sentiment over raw velocity metrics, the shift toward agent orchestration, and why the return of joy and creative empowerment may be the most important signal of all.

Links & References

  • Karynn Ikeda (@ktikeda)
  • Babylist  babylist.com
  • Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke's AI Memo (April 2025)  Original post on X
  • Anthropic Code Review for Claude Code  claude.com/blog/code-review
  • Claude Code  code.claude.com
  • Devin (AI coding agent by Cognition)  devin.ai
  • Cursor  cursor.com
  • Windsurf windsurf.com
  • Lovable (vibe coding tool)  lovable.dev
  • V0 (by Vercel)  v0.dev
...more
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StaffEngBy David Noël-Romas (@davidnoelromas) and Alex Kessinger (@voidfiles)

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