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AJ Adam Jacob On Syntax (Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski)

“If you're a product person and you have a bunch of engineers who have a trustworthy software factory, they could implement whatever they want to implement. … And so, like, how do product people feel about that? The answer is bad. They feel bad about it because their job is to tell engineers what to do and to be ahead of them. And you can't stay ahead of them because now they can produce outcomes at such a fast rate that you couldn't possibly keep up.”

Syntax (Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski) · Hands-On Engineering Podcasts · October 2026

“If you're a product person and you have a bunch of engineers who have a trustworthy software factory, they could implement whatever they want to implement. … And so, like, how do product people feel about that? The answer is bad. They feel bad about it because their job is to tell engineers what to do and to be ahead of them. And you can't stay ahead of them because now they can produce outcomes at such a fast rate that you couldn't possibly keep up.” — Adam Jacob, Syntax (Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski)

Asked how large engineering organizations should adopt AI "software factories," Jacob says the hard part isn't the technology. It's that the shift breaks existing points of control. His advice is to start with a team of five that is allowed to break every rule.

Transcript

Syntax (Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski) Around 22:37 into the episode
Adam Jacob

…for the most part is that it is a slop factory. And so if somebody comes and says to you, Hey, I have this technique that's going to make the slop factory go even faster. Are you in? You're like, absolutely not. You know, like the thing that's killing me, I do not want more of it. You know,

Wes Bos

…300 engineers committing CSS every single day. You know, like just the scale of some of these things is like, what would you recommend to a company that has hundreds, thousands of engineers of like, like, how do you re-architect? How do you even start to change how you work with this type of stuff?

Adam Jacob

…your existing work process, about the points of control, right? If you're a product person and you have a bunch of engineers who have a trustworthy software factory, they could implement whatever they want to implement. They could refactor whatever they want to refactor. They could ship whatever feature comes to mind without having to ask you questions and without having to need your permission. And so, like, how do product people feel about that? The answer is bad. They feel bad about it because their job is to tell engineers what to do and to be ahead of them. And you can't stay ahead of them because now they can produce outcomes at such a fast rate that you couldn't possibly keep up. And so now your job is to look at it exclusively from the end. Your job is to like review the outcomes of your engineering teams, try to align them to the theme. And then, and then, because it's the cost of rework is so low, if you don't like it, you can change it. That is such a weird organizational pivot that very few people have figured out how do I restructure my organization in order to get…

Speaker 4

Have you seen any large companies that have like at least started to take this on or switch toe?

Adam Jacob

I've seen people who have started. I have seen no one who has finished. Okay. And that's, you know, and I think that's true even amongst my peers. You know, like there was an era, it's slowing down now, but I would say six months ago, I was averaging three calls a week from friends who, you know…

Wes Bos

Yeah. And I, and I, I, I, I feel like you have such a good like your thumb on this type of stuff because I'm, I'm just, I keep thinking about big companies like LinkedIn. And once they get this, something like this in place, what do they do with? I just looked it up. They have 10,500 engineers. And…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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