Hire It Like a Human: Running a Company on Agents
What does it actually look like when a company puts AI at the centre of everything, rather than bolting it onto processes that haven't changed in decades?
Bruce is joined by Nathan Foreman, a principal engineer at Roller. Bruce and Nathan have worked together since their Cookdown days, and Nathan was the one who first showed Bruce how to "write code" with AI around a barbecue in Nashville.
They trace Nathan's journey from early GitHub Copilot to multi-agent workflows using Spec Kit, Gastown and Claude agent teams. They also cover what happened when he let agents approve their own pull requests and came back to 800,000 lines of working but unmaintainable code. Along the way they discuss why AI over-engineers, and how architecture decision records keep agents on track. They get into the "governance dial" between reading every law and getting sued, and the unsolved problem of handling secrets with computer-use agents. They're also candid about burnout, the checkpoints teams lose when one person can do every role, and Nathan's hard-won advice: look before you build.
What does it actually look like when a company puts AI at the centre of everything, rather than bolting it onto processes that haven't changed in decades?
Bruce Cullen introduces the AI for Humanity podcast and shares his personal journey with AI, from his early career in IT support to his current role as a product manager. He discusses the evolution of AI and its impact on various industries, as well as his experiences using AI for design, coding, and product development.