John Grass | Sr. Manager, EngineeringA Fundamental TransformationAn AI team is fundamentally more than just a group whose members incorporate AI tools into their existing workflows. The journey to becoming an AI team necessitates a fundamental and comprehensive paradigm shift in how the team defines ownership, engages in strategic planning, and, most critically, executes on its core goals and objectives. This transformation is not merely an addition of new technology; it is a restructuring of the team’s operating model, philosophy, and individual roles.Becoming an AI team requires a holistic…
Over the past year, the way we use AI at Thumbtack has gone through a few phases. Early on it was mostly curiosity, people experimenting with ChatGPT and Copilot on side projects, sharing tips in Slack. Then the models got noticeably better at working inside real, mature codebases (not just greenfield projects) and the conversation shifted. It stopped being about whether we should adopt AI-assisted development and became about how. Lately, it is moving towards the adoption of end to end agentic workflows for development.I’ve been thinking a lot about what this shift means, not just for our…
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An Engineer’s Guide to Better AI Skills: Implementing a Testing Process to Optimize Agent Performance in Any Repository or SkillAuthor: Daniel ReedThe tech industry is currently seeing a massive overhaul in the way we work and many are enjoying the benefits of AI agents, particularly when automating engineer workflows and serving domain-specific knowledge. However, relying on agents to consistently invoke a custom skill can be surprisingly unreliable at times.When adopting a new skill intended to help agents write code for Pinterest’s iOS architecture (I’ll call it rx-mvvm) we discovered that…
Why agentic coding tools demand a new identity for software engineers After more than two decades of professional software engineering, I have arrived at a set of conclusions that I find very uncomfortable. The era of mostly manual coding has ended. IDEs, in their current form, are no longer necessary. Traditional software development languages are […]
Meet Ashmann Syngle, Software EngineerI joined Thumbtack in July 2022, so it’s been just over three years now! I first heard about the company from my former engineering manager at HBO Max, who encouraged me to apply. I’m so glad he did.What I’m Working OnOver the past year, I’ve worked on several projects that make it easier for local service professionals on Thumbtack to connect with homeowners and grow their businesses. Most recently, I’ve helped launch new pricing features and experiments that improve how Thumbtack pros are matched with the right opportunities.Right now, I’m focusing on…
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