Engineering teams are building ten times — even a hundred times — more than they could two years ago. That's a win, but one not without challenges. Because the cost of building the right thing has climbed exponentially. In this episode of the ServiceNow Insights podcast, host Bobby Brill sits down with three leaders who are living this tension from three distinct angles: the content and design leader who first spotted the productivity math problem, the design VP pushing for discernment over speed, and the research lead keeping the human at the center.

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IN THIS EPISODE
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DAVID HOARE — Group VP, Digital Content & Design, ServiceNow
ANAND THARANATHAN — Group VP, Product Research & Insights, ServiceNow
DANTLEY DAVIS — SVP of Design, ServiceNow ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CHAPTERS
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0:00 Introduction & Guest Intros
1:13 David: The AI Philosophy — ChatGPT as genuine inflection point
3:02 David: Economic viability — why AI unlocks what was never possible before
3:12 Anand: Three-person startups scaling to $100M+
3:45 Dantley: From 3D Studio Max to Jarvis — AI as human superpower
6:29 Anand: The customer north star hasn't changed
7:10 David: Engineering's survival problem — the 100x production gap
8:32 David: Andrew Ng's PM-to-engineer ratio + the cost of building wrong
9:40 Dantley: Nine concepts in an hour — design velocity and discernment
12:04 Dantley: The hip-hop tastemaker — slowing down as part of the process
14:20 David: Content governance — the fox guarding the hen house
16:21 Anand: Trust and the human-AI system
17:20 Dantley: AI surprise — UI tech stacks, feature completeness & hidden tech debt
20:21 18-Month Close — Anand, Dantley & David ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
KEY TAKEAWAYS
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• Engineering is the first function to see massive AI productivity gains — but that creates a gap every other function has to survive
• The cost of building has dropped. The cost of building the wrong thing has climbed exponentially
• Discernment is the bottleneck — not speed. Nine concepts in an hour still needs a tastemaker
• AI quality is only as good as the content signals it receives — governance is not optional
• The customer north star hasn't changed. AI just changes how fast you can move toward it
• Customer value is the only metric that matters. Everything else is the path to it ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
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Subscribe for new episodes on AI, product, engineering, and the future of work.

#ServiceNow #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ProductDesign #SoftwareEngineering #ContentGovernance #DesignLeadership #AIStrategy #ProductManagement #EngineeringLeadership #TechLeadership #FutureOfWork #ServiceNowInsights #MachineLearning #Innovation #DesignThinking #TechPodcast #AIProductivity #DigitalTransformation #CustomerValue

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Can't believe it's already been 6 years. Thank you to our amazing guests and specially our listeners. In this season finale episode, Juan and Tim rant about the honest no-bs discussions they've had in 2026 and what are the topics they are looking forward to cover in the next season.

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What does it actually mean to be AI native? Not the buzzword — the real thing. Host Bobby Brill brings together seven ServiceNow experts across six conversations for a complete picture of what AI native thinking, building, and working looks like right now.

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WHAT WE COVER
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DI LE — AI Ethicist & Human-Centered AI Strategist, ServiceNow
The clearest definitions you'll find anywhere of responsible AI, ethical AI, and human-centered AI — and why all three are required if you're going to do this right. Plus: why AI native means AI as the operating system, not a feature.

DR. ALAINA BEAVER — Global Head of Accessibility Customer Engagement, ServiceNow
ServiceNow built the world's first AI model accessibility checker with the Global Accessibility Awareness Day Foundation — and open-sourced it on GitHub for free. Because responsible AI native behavior means holding AI itself accountable.

ANAND THARANATHAN — Research Leader, ServiceNow
A framework from cognitive science every AI builder needs: use, disuse, misuse, and abuse. The four modes of AI interaction — and why proper use is the only one that delivers.

TARA BOGAVELLI & KATRINA STANKIEWICZ — Voice AI Research Team, ServiceNow
How ServiceNow built a rigorous open-source evaluation framework for voice agents from scratch — and what cascade failures, transcription errors, and prosody failures actually sound like in practice.

IAN THURLOW & ANDREW YAN — Software Engineering Manager & Software Engineer, ServiceNow
The daily ground-floor reality of being AI native: AI as accelerator, AI as the new Stack Overflow, the calculator analogy, and why fundamentals matter more than ever.

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LEARN MORE
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ServiceNow Responsible AI: https://www.servicenow.com/responsible-ai
AI Model Accessibility Checker: https://www.servicenow.com/accessibility-statement.html
ServiceNow AI: https://www.servicenow.com/artificial-intelligence

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ABOUT THIS PODCAST
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Hosted by Bobby Brill. A ServiceNow podcast exploring the people, technology, and ideas shaping the future of work.

#AINative #ServiceNow #ResponsibleAI #HumanCenteredAI #AIEthics #EnterpriseAI #FutureOfWork #NowAssist #ArtificialIntelligence #Podcast

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Jason Doerr has spent years watching governance programs undermine themselves by cataloging everything without a use case, naming data stewards who have nothing to actually do, and building central teams that become blockers instead of enablers. In this episode, he walks through what pragmatic governance actually looks like: start with use cases, give stewards real work to action on, and let the central team set principles rather than police behavior. He also digs into PADU (Preferred, Acceptable, Discouraged, Unacceptable) as a practical roadmap framework, how LLMs can accelerate semantic layer creation without generating vanity metrics, and why the governance operating model is shifting toward agentic management ... whether the governance community is ready for it or not.

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This is the takeaway episode with Jason Doerr who has spent years watching governance programs undermine themselves. He walks through what pragmatic governance actually looks like and digs into PADU (Preferred, Acceptable, Discouraged, Unacceptable) as a practical roadmap framework.

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Bob Seiner has spent decades in data governance, and in this episode he joins Juan and Tim to unpacks his new framework, Data Catalyst Cubed, which multiplies data governance by change management and data fluency. Miss any one of them, and you get zero. The problem is that leadership has never treated behavior change as part of the governance mandate, and most data programs have never connected with the change management expertise that already exists inside their organizations.

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Takeaway episode with Bob Seiner where he unpacks his new framework, Data Catalyst Cubed: multiplies data governance by change management and data fluency. Miss any one of them, and you get zero.

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Day One Ready: What New Engineers Actually Need to Know About AI | Engineering Now Unlocked

Starting your first engineering role — or coming back for a return offer — and wondering what AI actually changes about the job? This episode gives you the real answer, from two engineers living it every day.

Jordan Shelton and Cynthia Mathenge sit down with Ian Thurlow (Senior Manager, Data Platform Software Engineering) and Andrew Yan (Software Engineer, Data Foundations) to talk about what day one looks like now, what AI tools actually do for early-career engineers, and what fundamentals still separate good engineers from great ones. If you’re about to start an internship, just got your return offer, or you’re a manager thinking about how to set new engineers up for success — this is the conversation you need before day one.

What you’ll learn
✔ What AI actually changes about day-to-day engineering work (and what it doesn’t)
✔ Why the fundamentals matter more than ever — not less
✔ How to build a network at a company like ServiceNow, even if you start remotely
✔ How to use AI as a sounding board, not a crutch

Chapters
00:00 Introduction — Engineering Now Unlocked
02:08 Meet Ian Thurlow and Andrew Yan
03:03 How AI is changing day-to-day engineering work
04:47 AI as an accelerator, not a replacement
09:04 AI as a sounding board
12:38 Leadership mindset in an AI-first team
13:46 Raising the bar for early-in-career talent 1
5:41 What your first 30 days should look like
17:43 This or That
19:16 Code reviews: the fastest way to learn that nobody talks about
20:57 Building your network — even fully remote
24:24 Ian and Andrew’s Work Advice
27:43 Outro

Guests
Ian Thurlow Senior Manager, Data Platform Software Engineering — ServiceNow
Andrew Yan Software Engineer, Data Foundations — ServiceNow

Hosts
Jorden Shelton Technical Program Manager, AI Engineering & Delivery — ServiceNow
Cynthia Mathenge Business Operations Manager, AI Engineering & Delivery — ServiceNow
Bobby Brill ServiceNow Insights

Links & Resources Learn more about ServiceNow Engineering → https://www.servicenow.com/company/careers/engineering.html

ServiceNow Docs → https://docs.servicenow.com

New to the channel? Subscribe so you never miss an episode of ServiceNow Insights.

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