Ep.4 with Shaundai Person, Netflix | Building a strong engineering culture & the role of AI
Shaundai Person on engineering culture, AI for productivity, and the "Shaundai Hierarchy of Needs" for developers!
Our speakers
Jim Bennett is head of developer advocacy at Pieces, focusing on enabling developers to be more productive by leveraging contextual awareness of not only the code they write but the content they read and the conversations they have.
Shaundai Person, Senior Software Engineer in the productivity engineering team at Netflix. international keynote speaker, and course instructor, passionate about helping developers level up their skills. With a strong background in front-end development and a knack for teaching, Shaundai shares insights on modern web technologies through talks, workshops, and online courses. 🚀
🎧 Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Insights
🟢 At Netflix’s Productivity Engineering Team, the focus is on building a community-driven culture where developers support and challenge each other.
🟢 Productivity isn't just about tools—it’s about people, collaboration, and healthy questioning to push the team forward.
🟢 Netflix’s productivity engineering team is described as a "colonoscopy org" because they deeply examine workflows to improve efficiency.
🟢 They follow the Paved Path approach, providing best practices and guardrails for engineering teams rather than dictating strict rules.
🟢 AI is powerful for aggregating data but cannot innovate on its own—human creativity remains essential.
🟢 Inspired by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Shaundai created a framework for developer success, with communication at the foundation.
🟢 In a fun twist, Jim’s kid tested AI-generated vs. human-written content at a science fair—and couldn’t tell the difference. This raises a big question: As AI advances, how do we maintain authenticity in human creativity?
Timeline
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.
