THE TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW
Why IT departments need to stop processing tickets and start solving problems Ask most CIOs what they do and you’ ll hear about service levels, vendor management and security protocols. Mike heard the same thing for years.
“ Even 10 years ago, the role was to get the enterprise applications correct, service your internal customers, get your rights and privileges and privacy and trust and safety right, protect the company’ s assets and deliver a good product internally,” he says.“ I think a lot of that over time turned into mostly‘ buy or rent software’ for a while.”
At Snowflake, he’ s flipping the script.“ What I’ m doing is basically shifting my team from a ticket mindset to really a solution mindset – we’ re going to bring engineering back into the CIO office.” No more ticket queues. No more service requests.“ It’ s no longer‘ I filed a ticket, would you please service me?’ It’ s‘ What are you trying to achieve? What problem are you trying to solve, and how can we help you solve that?’” The timing matters. When AI can potentially replace entire applications, buying another SaaS tool might not be the right answer.“ The answer may not be a new app – the answer may be an AI agent that replaces that app.”
Even Snowflake, only founded in 2012, has accumulated technical debt.“ I thought when I was joining I wouldn’ t have much legacy here, but that wasn’ t true. It’ s not old legacy, but in a fast-growing company, you end up buying three of this and two of that.”
28 September 2025