AI and Proactive Reliability with Kolton Andrus

AI and Proactive Reliability with Kolton Andrus

Author: Software Huddle April 8, 2026 Duration: 55:11
Today we're talking with Kolton Andrus, the Founder and CEO of Gremlin, about what happens to reliability when AI is writing most of the code. Kolton helped build the Chaos Engineering practice of both Amazon and Netflix before starting Gremlin. In our conversation we talk about scar tissue, the intuition engineers develop from being woken up at 3:00 AM to fix production outages and how AI doesn't have any of it. It generates code in an afternoon that maybe took a team previously weeks to build, but none of those painful lessons come along for the ride. We dig into why 10x more code might mean 10x more failures. The concept of reliability guardrails, think ethical guardrails, but for keeping your systems up. Why you still have to test in production no matter how good your staging environment is? How Gremlin is rethinking their product for the world where agents, not engineers, are essentially the primary users.And why we're entering a painful, narrow part of the hourglass before AI gets good enough to handle all of this on its own.

Every week on Software Huddle, Alex DeBrie and Sean Falconer sit down with a different expert from across the tech landscape. The conversations are less about quick tips and more about substantive discussions, digging into the real challenges and decisions behind building software, launching products, and navigating the industry's constant shifts. You'll hear from practitioners who have been in the trenches, offering perspectives that blend deep technical knowledge with hard-won business and entrepreneurial experience. Alex brings his specialized expertise as the author of The DynamoDB Book and an AWS Data Hero, while Sean contributes a unique viewpoint shaped by over two decades as an engineer, founder, and marketing executive, recognized as a Snowflake Data Superhero. Together, they create a space where complex topics in software development and technology trends become accessible and genuinely engaging. This podcast is for anyone who wants to move beyond surface-level news and understand the "why" behind the tools and strategies shaping our digital world. Tune in for a thoughtful huddle that feels more like a candid conversation between colleagues than a formal interview.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 79

Software Huddle
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