Ryan J. Salva
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.
AI & Technology Skills
AI should be viewed as an augmentative tool that removes rote drudgery (like summarizing PRs or writing boilerplate) to allow humans to focus on higher-level creative design.
"We see it range anywhere from the upper twenties to the forties across all the different languages. ... AI is going to infuse pretty much our entire development stack in the not so distant future. Cop..."
Creating a clear persona (like an 'AI Pair Programmer') helps define the boundaries of appropriate AI behavior and guides the user experience.
"Our stance on it, what we ended up coming to is actually the framing of Copilot as an AI pair programmer i think is a useful one. ... Well, if Copilot is your AI pair programmer and they're whispering..."
For real-time AI assistance, 200ms is the critical latency threshold to maintain user 'flow' without feeling like an interruption.
"We would run experiments to see how many milliseconds are the right amount such that a developer doesn't feel like they're being interrupted by Copilot and a suggestion. ... It seems like right now it..."
The quality of LLM output is as much about 'prompt crafting' and the context fed to the model as it is about the underlying model itself.
"We also experimented quite a bit. It's not just about the model, but it's also about what you feed the model. How do you prompt the model to return back a useful response? This kind of began a journey..."
Evaluating high-stakes emerging tech like AI requires deep cross-functional collaboration with legal, privacy, and 'Responsible AI' teams to mitigate ethical and safety risks.
"This product in particular, I probably spent more time with legal than any other products that I've ever kind of been responsible for. ... It is also privacy and security champions. It is, frankly, de..."
Career Skills
When transitioning roles, prioritize environments that offer high community impact and the opportunity to build 'V1' products from scratch.
"The decision to move as well, I think, was really focused not just on what GitHub was and maybe is at the time, but what GitHub also can be. ... to get to an opportunity to work on so many V1 products..."
Hiring & Teams Skills
A 'teach me something in one minute' test effectively evaluates a candidate's communication clarity, ability to synthesize complex info, and time management.
"I ask them to teach me something new in one minute. Usually I'll pull up my phone and I'll start the timer. I'll give them a second to think about it and start the timer. They're graded on three diffe..."
Product Management Skills
A healthy product portfolio balances high-risk moonshots (5-10%), operational maintenance (25-30%), and incremental improvements (60%).
"As a general rule, as a general principle, I certainly try to make sure that we're always reserving some capacity for bold, audacious experimental research projects. You can think of those really unce..."