Liberty IT

Last month, I traveled to Columbus, Ohio, for our annual meetup with colleagues from Liberty Mutual Insurance Small Commercial- Risk Eval. Spending time together in person is invaluable and cannot be replicated online, despite all our technological advancements. During our visit, we engaged in meaningful discussions about the impacts of AI and the importance of adhering to our core principles and practices within our high-performance engineering culture. We shared our processes around measuring metrics and emphasized our commitment to accountability on a regular cadence. We exchanged stories of successes and challenges, generating ideas to elevate our standards of excellence. We highlighted the necessity for engineers to maintain control during the rapid adoption of AI, ensuring the delivery of high-quality software products for our customers. Over the three-day onsite visit, we engaged directly with our underwriting team, gaining insights into their daily operations and receiving firsthand feedback on the features we have developed. We also explored enhancements that could improve their work experience. While the discussions were intense at times, we did find moments to unwind with golf, a night of arcade games, and Ross' Bar. Some fun times among our teams and a chance to get to know each other outside of work chat. Liberty IT #Teambuilding #AI #InPerson #culture

I had the pleasure of attending DX Annual in San Francisco this week, connecting with technical leaders who are navigating the same AI journey as we are at Liberty IT . A few things worth sharing: 1. AI Adoption is Growing — however moderate initial gains Whilst AI adoption continues to accelerate, Q1 data from DX's survey of 400 companies shows a median throughput increase of 8%. Compared to some other reported AI productivity gains, this is moderate however the more interesting conversation is around what's driving the outliers who are achieving significantly greater gains. 2. The Common Themes Behind Greater Productivity Among those seeing the biggest impact, two themes stood out: (a) A dedicated AI roll-out programme with a genuine focus on the cultural change required (b) A full SDLC approach — ensuring that optimising one area doesn't simply shift the bottleneck elsewhere, looking well beyond just the coding 3. Evolving Engineering Roles in an Agentic Future There was a thoughtful discussion around how engineering roles need to evolve as we move into an agentic era, with a clear need to define future skills and expectations. One quote from Jennifer St Pierre really resonated with me: "If engineers cannot see the future, they will seek to preserve the present." 4. Developer Experience — Whose voice is the loudest? As an advocate for Developer Experience (DEV-X) and ensuring engineers' voices are heard, it was interesting to learn that DX is applying this same thinking to autonomous coding agents. Their latest capabilities will provide feedback on: - Clarity of requirements - Steering effectiveness - Codebase predictability - Confidence in output It'll be worth watching how organisations respond to feedback from their new AI colleagues — and whether it's acted upon any faster than what software engineers have been requesting for years. 😄 Thanks to the DX team and all the speakers for a genuinely insightful event. Plenty to take back and reflect on.