Just Say No to "Yes-Man Agents" & "Process Barnacles": How Miro Builds Post-AI | Jeff Chow, CPTO

On a Friday, one of Miro's architects set his agents loose on the company's AI engine. Nobody asked him to. By Monday, he demoed a full refactor. Tuesday, it had a kickoff, and a few months later it was the headline of their user conference.

Here's the twist. Miro has refused to rebuild its process around AI. They've kept the same three milestones they've always had...they just changed what happens around them.

Our guest today is Jeff Chow, Miro’s Chief Product & Technology Officer. He helps lead a company whose entire job is helping cross-functional teams work better together, which makes it an unusually good place to watch what AI is actually doing to how teams build.

Jeff's take: AI hasn't moved the milestones — It's rewritten everything that happens between them.
In this episode, he shares:

• The false confidence trap of building alongside an agent that tells you every idea is brilliant, and why that makes the moments where humans actually align more important than ever
• Why product "process barnacles" accrete on companies as they scale, and how that quietly turns a culture of invention to optimization at just the wrong time
• And why saying no is the next organizational crisis. Now that anyone can build almost anything, it’s become clear that coding was never the hard part

Links

Jeff's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjchow/
Miro: https://miro.com/

Chapters

0:00 Introduction
2:20 Why Miro refused to rebuild its process around AI
5:20 What shows up at kickoffs and solutions reviews now
12:15 The false confidence trap: Say no to "yes-man" agents
14:30 From optimization culture to invention culture
18:20 How one IC's side project reshaped Miro's AI engine
22:30 Process barnacles and why saying no is the next crisis
27:30 Conclusion

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