Welcome to the Pieces AI productivity podcast, where we dig into how experts use AI to be more productive, as well as geeking out in general on different AI topics.

💩 In this episode, Jim is joined by Shaundai Person, a senior software engineer in the productivity engineering team at Netflix, described as a colonoscopy org! Shaundai talks about her team and their goals for building a common set of practices for good engineering culture at Netflix, with the main theme being that the number one driver for good productivity is having a good community of humans who are able to support each other, as well as not being afraid to question each other to bring the team up.

Jim and Shaundai then dig into AI for productivity. Shaundai is a big AI fan as a tool to help, and describes the Shaundai Hierarchy of Needs for developers - with AI being a part of the pyramid as one of the needs of developers to help them achieve innovation.

🌐 Links:

Connect with Shaundai on LinkedIn

Follow Shaundai on BlueSky

Shaundai’s YouTube channel

Follow Shaundai on TikTok

Paved paths

The Netflix culture memo

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

👉 Try Pieces for free: ⁠https://pieces.app⁠

💡 Learn more about Pieces features: ⁠https://pieces.app/features⁠



Connect with Pieces:

X: ⁠https://x.com/getpieces⁠

Bluesky: ⁠https://bsky.app/profile/getpieces.bsky.social⁠

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/getpieces/⁠

Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/getpieces/⁠

Discord: ⁠https://pieces.app/discord⁠

In this episode:

0:00:00 - Intro

0:03:19 - The colonoscopy org at netflix

0:05:58 - The Paved Path in platform engineering

0:14:58 - How productivity orgs build a community of humans lifting each other up

0:17:48 - Soft skills get you further than tech skills, and Shaundai learned hers in sales

0:21:18 - The Netflix culture memo and farming for dissent amongst a larger team

0:29:08 - How does AI fit into a human centric tech environment?

0:32:28 - Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for a tech environment

0:37:33 - To use AI you still have to know the fundamentals

0:38:58 - The Shaundai hierarchy of needs, with communication at the bottom

0:41:20 - Having and being able to articulate your soft skills is way more important than code

0:44:20 - $1,000 to know where to hit the machine with a hammer

0:45:15 - AI is good at bringing together data, but can’t innovate. Humans are needed

0:48:00 - Can humans tell AI generated content from human? Jim’s kid says no after a science fair project.