TinyMCE: Building Scalable Developer Tools with Mike Hideo

Summary

In this episode, Evan Cholfin interviews Mike Hideo, VP of Software Engineering at Tiny, about building scalable developer tools, the impact of AI on content management, and the future of web development. They explore Tiny's API-first approach, challenges in scaling engineering, and trends in AI-assisted software development.

Takeaways

Tiny's API-first approach
Challenges in scaling engineering
AI's impact on content management

Soundbites

"Business moves at AI speed, not internet speed."
"Seamless integration reduces hesitation."
"Success is delivering the right AI tools."

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to AI Speed and TinyMCE
02:30
Tiny's Unique API-First Approach
04:56
Engineering Challenges and Team Dynamics
07:00
Prioritization Challenges in Software Development
08:01
Skepticism in Tool Adoption
09:05
Defining Success in Product Development
10:21
Trends in Software Development
11:53
Opportunities in Developer Tools
12:51
Risks and Challenges in Software Engineering
13:49
Looking Ahead: Future Conversations

Video

https://youtu.be/yQTd5DUThNc

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome to AI Speed, the show where AI powered companies to talk about what actually works in the market right now. Business doesn't move at internet speed anymore. It moves at AI speed. And the people who figure out how to turn models into money will own the next decade. And Maven J. Choleton, founder of Luxamer, and growth partner to high performing brands. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Mike Dale, Vice President of Software Engineering and Tiny. Mike is responsible for leading engineering efforts behind products like Tiny MCE, one of the most widely used rich text editors in the world, empowering millions of applications and developers globally. His role sits at the core of building software that must scale, perform, and deliver consistently across an enormous user base. Mike, thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Thank you for having me, Evan. It's a real pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Absolutely. So you've spent your career leading engineering teams at scale. What drew you into the space and what made you focus on building products using used by developers globally?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Well, Evan, I've worked at a company called Red Hat for about 15 years, and I specialized in input methods and complex text languages. The ability for people in like China, Japan, Korea, Hindi to use a keyboard like this to be able to write. So we created that. And back in the old days, that was proprietary technology, the ability to actually write in your own native language on a keyboard. You had to pay for that. And I'm just really proud that I got to work with the organization that allowed us to open source that, to be able to give the ability for people to write in their mother tongue all over the world in over 50 different languages. And that experience brought me into Tiny, which is part of the cornerstone of web development. It's been around for over 25 years. We've been part of the WordPress ecosystem, which has generated a majority of the content on the internet, and just really happy to be here and helping the team to evolve to meet the challenges of tomorrow, especially around AI.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, absolutely. So from your position leading engineering, what makes Tiny's approach unique and how it builds and maintains products like TinyMCE at scale?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

I think what makes it unique is our uh API first approach. So what, and I know like people say that all the time, but there are so many different applications out there, and you have to figure out how do I build a component that can integrate into several app into several different ecosystems, all these different applications. It's not just enough for for me to provide an integration that you can use. It's important for me to build a series of APIs that allows you to seamlessly integrate tiny MCE into your application. And so that sort of gives us the ability to be flexible, allows our customers to use us in a way that they need to, to adapt it to their to their product. And we build it at scale with a lot of compliance features and governance features so that it allows you to have a lot of control over your content and over your environment. And that's the stuff that like a lot of large enterprises really appreciate.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yeah, definitely. So just digging a little bit deeper on that from what you're seeing day to day, what do you think is the core problem developers or companies face when it comes to content creation and embedding tools like this into their applications?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

I think the what what we hear when we talk to customers is all about compliance and governance, right? And especially in the age of AI, as you can imagine, um they are all running towards us and asking, look, what can we do to protect our content? What can we do to leverage our content? Right? A lot of these companies have decades and decades and decades of content of institutional memory embedded in their organization, and they're looking for ways of how we can unlock all of that. So when someone goes to a company and they generate ideas, business plans, and content within the company, that can age. It's almost like Alzheimer's. Sometimes companies can forget some of the best ideas they had. And so we have the ability to help them resurface that and repurpose that memory to make it relevant for today. I mean, there's there's a lot of good ideas out there. Like companies have a lot of good ideas today, but they also had a lot of really good ideas yesterday. And we want to we want to help them remember.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Yeah, definitely. So in your role, where are you personally spending most of your time right now? Uh getting uh getting releases out the door.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yeah, uh hurting the cats, um, you know, trying to make this sort of misfit band of wonderful open source engineers spread all over the globe, just trying to bring them together to to actually deliver what our what our customers want. So I spend most of my time on requirements, uh making sure PRs get reviewed, making sure that everybody stays even keeled during uh high pressure software delivery processes. Feel a lot, I always say I I feel like I think Deanna Troy on the Starship Enterprise. I'm like the ship's counselor, like I'm not the captain. I'm mostly just trying to keep everybody calm, right? So that so that we can get through today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah, definitely. Well, that's an important part of your role, I'm sure. So who do you see getting the most value from Tiny's products? What types of companies or use cases stand out?

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Uh most of them are large organizations, large enterprises, government, military. They have a lot of information that they need to uh to again keep relevant, but they also have a lot of content that is stored in these really aging systems from yesteryear, from 10, 20, 30 years ago, that they need to they need to bring forward. Our product allows them to actually migrate that content into a modern context for them to repurpose, and we can do it seamlessly. So that's you know, that's really like our best customer segment are those people that have that challenge. And companies have all of those challenges. We still see people using word perfect, right? So, and and they've written a lot of content in that, and they need to they need to bring it over and modernize it and and bring it over into a browser so that people can actually take a look at it.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah. Speaking of challenges, what's been your biggest challenge recently in scaling engineering for a product used across so many different environments and use cases?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Uh what's what's been my biggest challenge in that? I think it's trying. I mean, everybody always says these sorts of things when you're in my position, getting the priorities right. So uh how do I, you know, how do we truly try to understand our customers, knowing that our customers are evolving, right? They're evolving at, especially with AI, they are evolving so fast, they're asking so many questions. Our customers don't want to be left behind. So we're trying to figure out, you know, where exactly are their pain points and how can we, you know, how can we modify our product to help best serve them and suit them? And because it's changing every day, uh, you know, we have to listen, prioritize, and reprioritize. So I think my my biggest challenge is that prioritization. But you ask anybody in software, it's all it's all about the priorities within the business.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yeah, definitely. I'm curious, what do you think creates skepticism or hesitation when teams are just they're trying to decide whether to adopt or integrate a tool like Tiny MC?

SPEAKER_00 8:22

What do they I think what most of the questions we get are around how seamless can the integration be? Do I have to like do I have to change my application? Like how much of my application do I really have to change? Right? And that is a huge challenge. It's a real headache for their software development teams. And what we try to do is because we've built that API ecosystem, we make it a seamless integration. In fact, we even have a cloud where you get just one line of code, you just drop in and it instantiates and makes it really easy and seamless for them. So we we we we know I I guess we're sort of like we're just a guest, right? We're like a we're like a guest on um on like a talk show, right? You know, so we want to make sure that we're a really good guest in that environment, and that means trying to create that sort of like frictionless ease of integration.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah, definitely. So from your role, what does success look like over the next year in terms of product performance adoption and engineering scale?

SPEAKER_00 9:26

I think success is going to be our ability to deliver the right AI tools for our customers within the TinyMC ecosystem and all of our family of customers and our entire community of use. We know they need it. They need it in so many different ways. And we need, you know, that that challenge is like how do we actually figure out you know that priority and how do we actually build that? And they are changing, you know, their their needs are changing. The UI, like the UI around AI is changing rapidly, and people need to natively be able to use it. Right now, everybody is doing something so bespoke and different, and there is a lack of standards. And and and oftentimes when you're looking at a UI, you're you're you're like chasing down where do I click or how do I find the right prompt or how do I connect the right LO. And because there's a lack of standards, so we're starting to see that evolve. And I think that you know that that makes it a challenge, right? Because we really want to be there. We've been with our customers for so long, but we really want to take care of them, and we want to help our customers get to that next level safely and with ease with it with a modern UI framework.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Absolutely. So, what trends are you seeing in software development and developer tools that feel real versus hype?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Well, all of the AI assisted software development tools uh are they are very real. Uh I mean, when we when you look at when you look at what companies are hiring for right now, I mean they're looking for testers who can just test and validate AI generated code. I mean, that's that's now a role. Or that that that didn't used to be a role before. So that's that's one of the changes that we see happening in terms of and that's in terms of core software development, in in terms of sort of the periphery around software development, like from product management, project management, product marketing. We are seeing we are seeing individuals being able to leverage AI tools to make their day-to-day jobs easier. Uh, but you know, it makes it easier because now they can actually process a lot of information quickly. Um, but man, if I have to read another report that's been AI generated, I think I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go find, I'm gonna jump through that camera. Because it's because yeah, though in the in the periphery around software development, you can you can generate that content and those plans, but it's it's a matter of validating it, right? It doesn't make it a hundred percent correct. It absolutely needs validation. You can't take the tools at face value, they need a human being to validate it 100%. There's there's no way around that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

I completely agree. Where where do you see the biggest opportunity for companies building developer tools right now?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Where do you see the biggest opportunity? Think think it's really about trying to keep this is gonna sound super nerdy. Trying to trying to keep pace with the actual browser, right? Like even what we're looking at now is a web browser, and web browsers have evolved into almost an operating system that can they can take in all these integrations. So in that context, that the challenge of where the browser is evolving, how do you keep up with with the browser? How do you how do you understand the standards? Because there's these are all all the browsers are governed by a series of standards, and when they change, you have to adapt your software to change that. So that's a that's a huge effort, and it it really makes you situationally aware of what's happening on the internet and how people's interaction with browser technology is is important to them. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

And what risks or challenges are you paying the most attention to?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

What risks am I paying paying the most attention to? I think just trying to think like the biggest risk is in really just kind of trying to keep up. I mean, we don't want to be left behind. We've been around, we've been around for a long time. We understand this space really well, but yeah, just trying to keep up with everything is uh is a huge is a huge risk. Sometimes we want to move faster, but our our customers don't necessarily want us to move faster. Sometimes our companies need that stability, they need that, they need that governance. So like we're many software, you're you're you're caught in this space where you know you don't want to you don't want to have a breaking change, but you need to to evolve. And so I guess in that in that space, that's kind of a risk for us. That's kind of a big challenge for us is balancing those things.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Absolutely. So if we were to have this conversation again 12 months, which I hope we do, uh, what would need to happen for you to feel like it was a big win?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

I think I will feel I will feel it in our in the discussions with our customers. I will, I will, I will see that they the the questions that they'll be asking us will be a lot different. They'll be a lot more focused on knowing exactly what they want. So it'll turn probably less exploratory on how I can use AI within Tiny MCE into more, this is what I need. I need this, this, this, and this. Can you get it to me? So that's good, that's gonna be a big win, is is the education of our customers with our product and the understanding of what we offer them and us being able to meet those expectations.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

That's amazing. Well, that's it for today's episode of AI Speed. A huge thank you to Mike Cadeo for sharing his invaluable insights into how tiny is building and scaling products used by developers around the world and for navigating the challenges of network engineering and scaling. If you're building or leaving an AMI native company or a service business that uses any money under the hundred, and you care about revenue, adoption, and market share, make sure to subscribe AMI speed. Learn how the best AM operators ship fanister, still smarter, and stay ahead. Thanks for listening. Until next time, keep building, keep assembling, and keep moving at any nice speed. Thank you.