AI Magnifies Your Clarity...or Confusion

I remember a while back when AI-assisted coding started to come across everyone's radar, Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp, had started using Claude Code and was talking about it on X. It was noted several times on X and in some software engineering Slack channels I'm a part of that Mitchell + AI-assisted coding was quite OP (overpowered - a gaming term). As software engineers, we understood that AI in the right hands is a powerful tool, and we noted the inverse, as well.

But Mitchell isn't an extraordinary coder and technologist because he knows how to string together some good syntax. He's extremely clear on his process and goals, and so he's able to elegantly design systems that last and that are extremely extensible. He doesn't just write code. He writes clarity.

This clarity is documented for all to see in the principles and tao of HashiCorp, which he and co-founder Armon Dadgar designed. For example:

• Resilient systems
• Workflows, not technologies
• Simple, Modular, Composable
• Pragmatism
• Integrity
• Reflection

Empathy-Infused Product Design

As a cloud automation engineer early in my tech career, Terraform, Packer, and Vagrant, all HashiCorp products, were tools I used daily, and there was something about them I really loved and made me feel comfortable. Being new to tech, that was a welcomed feeling. I used to say that the products somehow had empathy built into them; I didn't know how, but I could feel it. I had an intuition that if the products were so pleasant to use, there was some serious magic to the culture behind it. That feeling drew me to really want to work at HashiCorp, and after a few tries, I finally landed a job on the Terraform Enterprise team.

Applying sophisticated design thinking, Mitchell and Armon infused the culture of HashiCorp with the clarity they had described in the tao and principles. From the beginning, they designed the HashiCorp culture to be remote-first (pre-pandemic), which required a sophisticated level of design. When I onboarded, there were several lessons, documents, videos, etc. on how to be a good remote-first employee and what good, intentional communication looked like in that world. The people that I saw succeed the most in that environment were incredibly good communicators and intentional about building rapport with others with a genuine, give-first philosophy while also being incredibly skilled technically.

These weren't just talking points; they were implemented everywhere from the recruiter screening to the day to day code reviews, reinforced at every touchpoint. I don't know how many times our team would assess the quality of a solution based on its pragmatism or if beauty worked better.

And when review time rolled around, which is normally not super fun, I actually got a lot of pride out of writing about which principles I exhibited throughout the year and how. None of this could have been possible without the founders' clarity to deeply understand their systems and the kind of culture they wanted their company to have.

Principles 9 and 10 of The Toyota Way state:

Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.

Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy.

The culture wasn't an accident. It was skillfully designed.

A Company is People

Whenever someone says, "[Company Name] did [a thing]," I will often remind them that, in fact, people did those things. A company is not a sentient being. People are. That's why it doesn't matter what the company website says their culture is.

The culture of a company is the sum total of the actions of the people in it.

A company who was able to build empathy into their products wasn't successful because of their technical prowess alone. Mitchell and Armon decided to not only have those values for themselves but to instill them in every employee.

AI as an Amplifier

The 2025 DORA report shined an interesting light on AI:

(AI) magnifies the strengths of high-performing organizations and the dysfunctions of struggling ones.

This is why Mitchell coding with AI is so powerful. It's amplifying the clarity, good judgment, quality, and attention to detail that he already built for himself. It took years of understanding systems at a deep level to develop those traits. Years of prioritizing empathy for his users.

The same principle holds true at the company level. If your company has clear values that are lived out in daily practice, then AI will magnify that clear vision.

If your company has confused and fragmented values that are only mentioned as blurbs on the website, then AI will magnify that confusion and lack of values.

Where to Start

A company is people, and whatever those people are doing will be amplified with your AI adoption, so what are you doing to ensure that the right culture is amplified?

If you were to feed your current team's processes, communication style, and decision-making into an AI-amplification machine, what would come out the other end? Would it be a clear vision and direction, or would it be a tangled mess of confusion and blurry lines? Can it scale? Is it capable of high velocity?

How to Ensure You're Amplifying Clarity

Well, first you have to make sure you have it.

Start with you and your sphere of influence.

• Do you have clear goals and values?
• Do your goals and values show up in practice? (During meetings, code reviews, performance reviews, communications)
• Are you consistent with them?

If not, then get clear on those things before speeding ahead with AI so as not to amplify confusion. Then start with just one touchpoint and come up with a meaningful and authentic way to reinforce your values through that medium (code review, 1:1, email, etc). And clearly define what "good" looks like in that context.

Clarity is a gift to your co-workers, employees, customers, leadership - everyone! It gets you more aligned, reduces ambiguity and anxiety, and ensures that when you amplify your company culture with more AI-adoption, you'll be amplifying the right things.

Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement for HashiCorp today, as I'm not current on the latest with them, but this is simply a thoughtful reflection on how clarity of vision shaped a company. Additionally, the IaC space is being disrupted by innovators such as System Initiative with their AI automation approach to infrastructure which deserves a shoutout.