The original team that was working on co-pilot at GitHub was, you know, the team that we call GitHub next. And essentially their job is to work on second and third horizon projects, what some folks might call moon shots. Things that we never really expect work in the next one or two years, but three, five years down the line actually turned into something meaningful.
Ryan J. Salva is the VP of Product at GitHub, where he led the incubation and launch of Copilot. Copilot uses OpenAI’s ML engine to suggest code and entire functions in real time, right from your editor, and is changing the way we build software. Ryan is an experienced developer and product manager, with over a decade of experience working for Microsoft before moving to lead the GitHub product team. In today’s episode, he shares how Copilot got its start, how it moved from prototype to live product, and how he structures R&D teams within larger companies. He also discusses the ethical questions surrounding AI use and how to build a successful product team, and shares the inside story of the development of Copilot.