View Transcript
Episode Description
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