AI isn't for cutting costs, it's for multiplying impact | Super.com's Matt Culver

Is your company using AI to trim your budget, or to multiply your team's impact? We're joined by Matt Culver, a senior engineering leader at Super.com, to discuss why the common view of AI as a tool for cost-cutting is a misguided "accounting mindset" that ultimately destroys trust. He argues that leaders should instead see efficiency gains from AI as a powerful opportunity to reinvest in their teams. This conversation reframes the AI debate by urging leaders to look beyond the coding loop to improve the entire product development lifecycle—from ideation to delivery.

Matt explains that the key to successful AI adoption is aligning new initiatives with the developer's core incentives: removing friction and enabling the creative flow state that makes their job enjoyable. He provides a human-centric approach for channeling AI's power to solve upstream problems in product planning and market research, rather than just generating more code. Learn how to use AI not as a means to an end, but as a way to empower your developers, generate more value, and build a high-trust engineering culture.

Bring AI into your code review process with LinearB

Follow the hosts:

• Follow Ben
• Follow Andrew

Follow today's guest(s):

• Learn more about Super: Super.com
• Connect with Matt: LinkedIn | matt@super.com

Referenced in today's show:

• A small number of samples can poison LLMs of any size
• Revisiting "Intelligence Drift"
• AI profiteering is now indistinguishable from trolling 
• The AI water issue is fake
• HTML’s Best Kept Secret: The <output> Tag 
• Life in a World of Pervasive Immorality: The Ethics of Being Alive

OFFERS

• Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free.
• Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era.

LEARN ABOUT LINEARB

• AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production.
• AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance.
• AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil.
• MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.