The most AI-forward company I've worked at automates boring stuff first.
I joined n8n three months ago expecting a somewhat chaotic scaleup with light process and a lot of "we'll automate that later." Instead, on my second week, I watched an agent assign PR reviewers by checking Linear tickets, Slack availability, and who was out of office in HiBob. No demo or tucked-away knowledge. It just works and it's one less thing someone had to remember.
I'd spent two years running my own startup, convinced I had AI figured out. I was wrong about almost all of it.
What I got wrong
When you're the only engineer in a company of fewer than ten people, you can't see what a 100+ person organization looks like when it takes automation seriously. I thought being AI-native meant engineers with good tools. Copilot, GPT wrappers, maybe a chatbot bolted onto the product. I also assumed scaleups had less process than big companies. Fewer meetings, lighter systems, move fast.
