Pete Hunt was a core React team member at Facebook, helped build Instagram's first web app, sold a company to Twitter, and now runs Dagster Labs — the open-source data orchestration company behind Dagster and Dagster Plus. Anna sat down with him to talk about what AI is actually doing to engineering teams, where it isn't helping, and how a $62M-funded company thinks about hiring, distribution, and shipping.
In this episode:
→ The two types of engineers in the AI era — and why "journey people" hate it while "destination people" love it
→ Where AI gives Dagster a 5:1 compression (and where it gives almost none)
→ Why they didn't cut hiring after raising — and what high-growth companies actually do with productivity gains
→ How they handle "slop landing in master" and the alignment work humans are inheriting
→ Why distribution and attention — not product — are now the real bottleneck
→ Their 4-week sprint, 2-week cool-down development cycle and what gets done in each
→ How the open-source product funds the commercial one (and when companies should pay)
For founders, engineering leaders, and operators figuring out what AI actually changes about how software gets built and sold.
----------- Episode's Chapters -----------
0:00 Introduction & Welcome
0:56 Pete's Background and Dagster
3:43 From Engineer to CEO
6:38 AI and Developer Experience
11:17 Data Privacy and Security
14:19 How AI is Changing Product Development
19:16 Developer Productivity and Hiring
26:01 Open Source Strategy and Go-To-Market
🎙️ Pete Hunt - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwhunt/
Dagster Labs - https://dagster.io/
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