Herding Squirrels Ep 21
Frédéric Returns
We Talk AI Adoption and Integration
Episode Overview
Frédéric Rivain is the CTO at Dashlane, a leading cybersecurity company — which means when AI coding tools started flooding the market, his team had more reasons to be skeptical than most. In this episode of Herding Squirrels, Frédéric walks us through how Dashlane built real AI adoption across an engineering org that had legitimate security concerns about the tools, why the hardest part of the rollout was never the technology, and what leaders get wrong when they treat AI adoption as a deployment problem instead of a people problem. If you’re leading a team through an AI transition right now, this conversation is the honest version of what that actually looks like from the inside.
About Frédéric
Frédéric Rivain is the Chief Technology Officer at Dashlane, a leading cybersecurity company specializing in credential management and digital identity solutions. With over two decades of experience in tech leadership, Frédéric drives innovation in security and privacy. A passionate advocate for user-centric security, he brings a unique perspective on blending convenience and robust protection for both individuals and businesses.
Find Frédéric online: Dashlane Blog
Episode Highlights
[00:01:14] Why a security-first engineering team had more skepticism about AI tools than most
[00:02:04] The ambassador model: how Dashlane built grassroots buy-in before going broad
[00:08:13] Using a big refactoring project as proof — what took months got done in weeks
[00:09:15] Diffusion of innovation in practice: moving from enthusiasts to the early majority
[00:10:31] Why Dashlane decided NOT to chase AI code generation at all costs
[00:12:36] The AI guild: creating a community forum where concerns can surface safely
[00:15:00] The ROI problem — why proving the dollar value of AI investment is harder than it looks
[00:18:06] How AI is blurring the lines between roles and what that means for teams
Key Insights
Adoption is a people problem first. The technical challenges of AI rollout are real, but the harder work is getting past hesitancy — especially in teams with legitimate, well-reasoned concerns about what the tools produce. Change management is the actual job. (00:01:40)
Start where the energy already exists. Frédéric didn’t mandate adoption from the top. He found the engineers who were already excited — the Generative AI Enthusiasts Slack channel — and gave them structure, access, and permission to experiment safely. Ambassadors create emulation. You don’t have to build enthusiasm from scratch if you look for where it already lives. (00:02:04)
Proof beats persuasion. When Dashlane used AI to help migrate a monetization system with 10,000 integration tests — a project that would have taken months manually — it finished in a few weeks. That anecdote did more to move skeptics than any internal presentation. Give people a concrete win they can see. (00:08:13)
Not all resistance is fear. Some of it is signal. When engineers pushed back on aggressive AI code generation, they weren’t wrong — they saw that generating more code faster would just create bottlenecks in review, threat modeling, and QA. Frédéric listened. They shifted focus to augmenting the whole software lifecycle, not just the code output. (00:10:31)
Community beats mandate for surfacing real concerns. The AI guild — a self-organized forum where engineers could share what’s working, what isn’t, and where they’re stuck — created a space where concerns could surface without feeling like complaints. Management was present but not dominant. (00:12:36)
The ROI conversation is coming. You can feel the productivity gain from AI. Putting dollars behind it is a different problem. Frédéric draws a parallel to the cloud transition: the cost curve and the value curve don’t line up neatly, and CFOs will eventually ask. Being ready for that conversation matters. (00:15:00)
The two skills that matter most right now. The ability to learn fast and adaptability. Not just in engineers — in every person navigating a role that looks different than it did a year ago. (00:19:12)
Key Quotes
"It was as much of a change management story, and the people changing their habits, more than a technical story." — Frédéric
“We don’t mandate for you to use it, but you need to try. You need to play, you need to learn, you need to become fluent.” — Frédéric
"One thing to call out however is that sometimes when there is resistance it's for the good reasons"
“With AI, you can do ten things in parallel instead of one. But that doesn’t mean the number of things you want to do are reduced.” — Frédéric
Resources Mentioned
Dashlane Blog — Frédéric contributes regularly
Diffusion of Innovation (framework referenced in the conversation)
GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code — tools used in Dashlane’s AI rollout
The concept of “guilds” as community-driven knowledge-sharing forums within engineering orgs
About Herding Squirrels
Herding Squirrels is a podcast about the human side of change. Teams don't struggle because of bad strategy. They struggle because change is hard, people are complicated, and most organizations are better at announcing transformation than actually living it. We talk to the people figuring it out in real time. Subscribe wherever you listen.
Other Episodes:
Herding Squirrels Ep 14 w Adam Tal
Herding Squirrels Ep 13 w Oliver Gray
Herding Squirrels Ep 12 w Louie Celiberti
Herding Squirrels Ep 11 w Nicole Tibaldi
