Finding Your Next Move: Reinvention in the Age of AI
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What does it take to start over when you’re already at the top?
- Intros, one line each (they give fuller ones in their first answer):
CTO of Red Hat, who went from his first Linux patch to one of the most prolific kernel contributors.
Went from practicing alone on a Florida farm to world freestyle champion, then started over in street skating.
Origin stories
Stop each at the peak. If either drifts into the change, hold it.
Framing
This part gives the audience your backstory and ends with each of you at a peak (Chris: prolific kernel hacker, Rodney: freestyle champion). Please stop there. The changes come next, and they land harder if the audience has just seen how good you were at the old thing. Chris goes first because his story will feel familiar to a room full of developers. Rodney’s story then widens it beyond tech.
Take us back to your first Linux patch. What happened, and what happened next?
Asked for: the moment the patch was accepted and what it did for him; how one patch led to years as a top kernel contributor. The community part matters: we come back to it.
“Chris found his craft through a community of hackers. Rodney, you found yours alone on a farm in Florida.”
How did a kid practicing by himself on a farm become the best freestyle skater in the world?
Asked for: the hours, the obsession, what it felt like to win. End at the top of freestyle.
Reinvention
Listen for the cost: what shifted, what felt uncertain, why they did it anyway.
You were one of the top kernel contributors in the world. As your role grew toward leading Red Hat’s technology strategy, how did your time and focus shift, and what was hard about that change?
Asked for: how he stayed close to the Linux community and hands-on work as CTO; what kernel work never taught him; which parts of being a hacker still shape how he leads.
You were the best freestyle skater in the world. What made you start over in street skating, knowing everyone would watch you be a beginner?
The heart of the panel: give it room. Famous, and bad at something in public. Many senior developers feel a version of that now with AI.
Back and forth
Invite them to answer each other, not just you. These set up the AI section.
When you gave up the thing you were best at, what turned out to be your real craft?
Expect: Rodney’s accent and mental models: threw away 80–90%; the 10–20% that carried over showed up in street like an accent in a new language. Chris’s accent: systems thinking, the discipline of kernel code review, earning trust by contributing.
Why it matters: many in the room think their craft is writing code, so AI feels like losing it. Their craft went deeper than the activity.
Take us back to the hardest moment of that in-between stretch, when you’d walked away from what you were best at and weren’t yet good at the new thing. What were you afraid of, and what actually happened?
Asked for: one specific moment, told honestly. The gap between the fear and what happened is the reassuring part; what got them through it (a habit, a mindset, a person) is what the room takes home.
Skateboarding and open source both run on community, where contribution matters more than trophies. How did your community help you get through reinvention?
Expect: Chris: deep credibility let him lead at Red Hat, where credibility and good arguments matter more than formal authority in the org chart. Rodney: Daewon, learning from and with skaters who started in street.
Callback to Chris’s patch and Rodney’s skating culture; organizations get through AI the same way, by learning from each other.
Community carries you through a change. Now the change in this room: AI.
Reinvention in the age of AI
Framing
Chris leads this section with what’s happening at Red Hat right now. Rodney, you don’t need to talk about AI itself, though you’re welcome to. Your main role is to respond as someone who has been through this kind of change and can see the patterns.
Chris, where is Red Hat with developing with AI, how did you get there, what was hard, and what was surprising?
Why it matters: Red Hat is far ahead of most of the room. Paint today first, so they have a picture of where the change leads, then the path there.
↳ Push for real details: surprises, where people pushed back, what he’d do differently.
So that was the organizational transformation. How has the transition been for the average Red Hat developer?
Listen for: identity loss (“I am a coder”); changing day-to-day work (less typing, more specifying, reviewing, steering agents); lost flow; the review burden; uneven adoption; juniors building judgment; quiet fear (“am I still valuable?”).
Expect: still building. Decide, direct, judge, own. Hand off the typing, not the responsibility. Honest about the mix: some thrived fast, some grieved.
↳ Push for one engineer, ideally skeptical at first: what changed for them, and what they miss.
Rodney, as someone who has personally gone through reinvention, what advice would you give to the developer Chris just described?
Give it room. He has a poetic answer ready; let it land.
We’re going to leave you with a prompt instead of an answer. Think about what you heard today, and what you’re going to do differently on Monday, as a developer, as a leader, or both.
2:28 · thank Rodney, Chris, and the audience