AI for the Fortune 2000: How Tenex Builds an AI-Native SDLC — Alex Lieberman & CJ Hess

Alex Lieberman and CJ Hess join swyx at AI Engineer New York to discuss Tenex’s approach to AI-native engineering, paying for outcomes, MetaHarness, enterprise AI adoption and rebuilding SaaS.

Show notes:

Tenex: https://www.tenex.co/

Building an AI-native SDLC: https://www.tenex.co/blog/building-an-ai-native-sdlc

Earlier Tenex episode: https://www.latent.space/p/10x-ai-engineers-with-1m-salaries

Kill My SaaS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlD-CkLVKtU

Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vki6cklFqxo

0:00 Cold open

0:26 Introductions

0:51 What Tenex does

1:32 Why CJ joined Tenex

3:17 Paying engineers for outcomes

7:20 Inside MetaHarness

10:25 Models and long-running tasks

15:11 Token spending and ROI

19:29 The enterprise AI adoption gap

23:22 Why agent deployment is hard

24:42 Vertical AI and enterprise software

30:32 Kill My SaaS

35:23 AI and jobs

38:18 New York’s AI ecosystem

42:28 Hiring at Tenex

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