Podcasts about engineering leadership

Sponsored by Blocks: Save at least 20% on your AWS costs with AI-powered optimization and enterprise discounts. Get your free Cloud Check at https://blocks.cloud/alphalist?utm_source=alphalist&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=blocks-podcast-2026 Dana Lawson's path into tech started with backup tapes, not a keyboard-in-the-womb origin story. She joined the US Army in the late '90s, automated her way out of manual password resets, and went on to become VP of Product Engineering at GitHub before taking the CTO seat at Netlify. She joins Tobi to make the case that "writing code is no longer the job", an argument from her own New Stack article that lit up Hacker News, and one she doesn't back away from here. The conversation explores why trust in AI agents may eventually become automatic, the same way our trust in cars we can't repair ourselves already has. Dana explains why Netlify is designing for "agent experience" alongside developer experience, and why the engineer's role is shifting from writing every line of code to defining architecture, guardrails, reliability, and safe user experiences. CTOs will walk away with a sharper way to think about where human judgment still matters versus where it's already been commoditized, including the tension between speed and control, whether developers risk becoming the bottleneck, and why the real constraint may be moving from "can we build it?" to "does anyone actually want it?" What's covered: - Dana's path from the US Army to VP of Engineering at GitHub to CTO of Netlify - Why she argues "writing code is no longer the job" and the Hacker News backlash - The self-driving car analogy for trusting AI agents - What "agent experience" means and why Netlify designed for it - Craftsmanship, control, and the shift from writing code to defining guardrails - Whether developers risk becoming the bottleneck in the agentic era - Why the constraint is moving from "can we build it" to "does anyone want it"

In this episode, Sergiy Nesterenko (CEO @ Quilter) joins the pod to share how he turned a personal technical challenge into his own company, even before the market caught up. He shares his unique journey from SpaceX to Quilter and addresses common eng leader / founder challenges, including taking critical feedback to solve tough technical problems, knowing when your most important role is educating the market / customers, and choosing the right customers. Sergiy and Jerry also dissect insights into principles around building circuit boards, and common misconceptions around hiring top-tier talent, finding investors, and procuring customers as an early-stage company.   ABOUTSERGIY NESTERENKO Sergiy Nesterenko is the Founder and CEO of Quilter, the first physics-driven AI platform that fully automates PCB layout design. Under his leadership, Quilter has pioneered autonomous board design – creating the missing automation layer for hardware and compressing weeks-long layout cycles into hours. Backed by Index, Benchmark, Coatue, and Tony Fadell, Quilter is redefining what's possible in hardware development. Previously, Sergiy spent five years at SpaceX as a Senior Radiation Effects Engineer, building electronics for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.   SHOW NOTES: Introducing Sergiy Nesterenko & the inspiration behind Quilter (1:43) Why now is the right time to tackle this technical challenge (3:37) The technology landscape during Quilter's early days (6:05) Sergiy's fundraising journey & key takeaways (8:26) The importance of adopting an evolutionary mindset (10:52) Early problems that Quilter aimed to solve (13:08) Navigating the balance between technical problems & consumer readiness (15:59) How negative feedback can lead to solving a key problem (18:34) Knowing which feedback to incorporate into product iterations (20:08) Lessons learned from choosing the wrong customers (27:33) First principles approach to circuit board building (29:31) Signals that it's the right time to tackle a hard technical challenge (34:04) Advantages to solving really hard problems & tackling entrepreneurship (36:32) Common misconceptions surrounding early phase companies (38:17) Sergiy's experience working with Eric @ Benchmark (39:46) Why investors like founders who spend time in the “idea maze” (42:19) Strategies for convincing high-profile talent to join your org early on (43:22) Rapid fire questions (45:10)   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

(04:48) Brought to you by SpeechifyAITired of text-to-speech that sounds robotic or costs too much at scale? SpeechifyAI's new Simba 3.2 model ranks #1 on Artificial Analysis for realness, priced under $10 per million characters. Building something conversational? Check out the Simba Voice Agents API for low-latency, natural back-and-forth interaction. Try it free at speechify.ai.Why do the same software delivery illusions keep fooling smart engineering teams? Elisabeth and Joel show how systems thinking, through signals and levers, helps you spot the illusions of progress, predictability, and control before they cost you.In this episode, Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi, co-authors of Signals & Levers, share the story behind the book and trace the “software crisis” back to a 1968 NATO conference, arguing it never actually went away. They explain why software delivery is an adaptive sociotechnical system, and why treating it as a simple linear process leads leaders to pull the wrong levers.Elisabeth breaks down why proxy metrics like velocity are made-up numbers dressed up as science, and why cycle time tells a truer story. Joel walks through the CREATE framework (capacity, risk, execution, adaptability, trust, and economics), and how it can help leaders spot unintended consequences before they happen. They also dig into the three illusions leaders live under: illusion of progress, predictability, and control.The conversation closes with a candid look at where AI fits into all of this, when it amplifies good systems, when it makes bad ones worse, and why optimizing for learning matters more than ever.Timestamps:(00:00:00) Trailer & Intro(00:02:34) The Backstory Behind “Signals & Levers”(00:05:55) Why Has the ‘Software Crisis' Never Actually Gone Away?(00:08:41) Why Do the Same Software Development Problems Keep Appearing?(00:10:55) What is an Adaptive Sociotechnical System?(00:15:09) Why Do Business Executives Fail to Understand Software Development?(00:20:03) What Are Signals and Levers in Engineering Leadership?(00:24:31) What Makes Proxy Metrics Like Velocity and Lines of Code Dangerous?(00:28:23) Are DORA Metrics a Good Proxy for Software Development Productivity?(00:32:50) What is the CREATE Framework for Avoiding Unintended Consequences?(00:38:26) How Do You Quantify and Apply the CREATE Framework?(00:44:09) What Are the Three Illusions That Leaders Face in Software Delivery?(00:50:27) Will AI Truly Speed Up Software Development?(00:55:55) How Should Leaders Integrate AI Into Systems Thinking?(01:00:53) Can AI Be a Thinking Partner for Systems Thinking?(01:04:26) Why Is the U-Curve a Powerful Tool for Modern Leadership?(01:09:17) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom_____Elisabeth Hendrickson & Joel Tosi's BioElisabeth Hendrickson is a technology leader with 30+ years of experience, having served as VP R&D at a public company and VP Engineering at a Series B startup. She's the author of Explore It! and There's Always a Duck, and now helps tech leaders improve collaboration, decision-making, and execution.Joel Tosi has spent over 25 years delivering software products. For the past decade, he's helped teams see the systemic issues holding them back and stop “change theater,” using the techniques from Signals & Levers to give everyone a shared view of reality. He's presented these ideas internationally for over five years.Follow Elisabeth & Joel:LinkedIn (Elisabeth) – linkedin.com/in/testobsessedLinkedIn (Joel) – linkedin.com/in/joel-tosi-531a3bWebsite – signalsandlevers.comSignals & Levers – itrevolution.com/product/signals-and-leversSignals & Levers workshops – maven.com/signalsandleversLike this episode?Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/265.Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn and Instagram.Buy me a coffee or become a patron.

Ingenieure neigen dazu, jedes Problem technisch lösen zu wollen. Doch häufig liegt der entscheidende Engpass nicht in der Lösung selbst, sondern in der Wahrnehmung und im Verhalten der Menschen. In dieser Folge erfährst du, warum die psychologische Lösung oft wirksamer ist als die technisch perfekte.Show Notes:>> No Zero Days | Buch für Ingenieure: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nozerodays.de⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠/buch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠>> Netzwerk für Ingenieure: ⁠⁠⁠engineer-alliance.de⁠⁠⁠>> Tim Schmaddebeck auf LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hier klicken⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠>> Buchempfehlungen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠mentorwerk.de/buecher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stichworte zur Folge:Ingenieur Karriere, Karriere als Ingenieur, Podcast für Ingenieure, Führungskraft werden, Teamleiter werden, Führung für Ingenieure, Management für Ingenieure, Engineering Leadership, vom Ingenieur zur Führungskraft, strategisches Denken, unternehmerisches Denken, Intrapreneurship, Ingenieur Mindset, Probleme richtig lösen, bessere Entscheidungen treffen, kritisches Denken, Systems Thinking, First Principles, Overengineering vermeiden, Kundenorientierung, Kundenbedürfnisse verstehen, Nutzerverhalten, Psychologie im Business, Entscheidungspsychologie, Behavioral Design, Customer Experience, User Experience, Produktmanagement, Innovation, psychologische Engpässe

Tomas Reimers, Co-Founder & CPO @ Graphite, reveals his journey to becoming a founder and some of the major moments from Graphite's product development story. He dissects frameworks for determining when it's time to quit your full-time job to pursue becoming a founder and analyzing the costs vs. benefits of that decision. We cover how to decide what customer problems to solve, understanding how software development trends impact what you're building, and product market fit and selling considerations. Lastly, Tomas shares valuable strategies when it comes to selling to developers.   ABOUT TOMAS REIMERS Tomas Reimers is the CPO and co-founder of Graphite, the a16z and Anthropic-backed AI code review platform that Cursor acquired in December 2025. Previously, he was an engineer at Facebook. Passionate about advancing developer velocity, Tomas holds a BS in Computer Science from Harvard University.   SHOW NOTES: The origin story behind Graphite (1:05) Signs that it's time to quit your job / found a company (4:03) How Tomas & his co-founders knew it was time to break up with their jobs (5:40) Understand what leaving your job will mean career-growth wise (7:33) Embracing regret minimization (9:28) Pros & cons of developing in blue ocean vs. red ocean areas as a founder (11:49) Strategies for determining what software to build / how is software dev evolving (14:00) Tomas's framework for determining bets (15:50) Recommendations for selling as a founder (17:52) Identifying if sales isn't working or if product market fit is off (20:35) Using customer insights to experiment & make a PMF pivot (23:05) Why developers don't want to be sold to, they want to be taught (24:42) How to apply teaching vs. selling into early GTM strategy (27:20) Utilizing demonstrations to gain developer buy in & trust (29:24) What Tomas is looking forward to in Graphite's future / software dev in general (32:04) Rapid fire questions (33:34)   LINKS AND RESOURCES The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick's quick, practical guide that will save you time, money, and heartbreak. Founding Sales - The Startup Sales Handbook - rhe distillation of Pete Kazanjy's experience at his first software startup, TalentBin going from a founder with a product marketing and product management background to early sales guy, early sales manager, and eventual post-acquisition sales leader at Monster Worldwide in addition to his later experience founding Modern Sales, the nation's largest sales operations, enablement, and leadership community. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts - Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Zach Daniel, creator of the Ash Framework and Igniter, VP of Engineering at Remedy Meds, and upcoming ElixirConf keynote speaker, to talk about what sits between an LLM and useful engineering work. Zach reflects on how much has changed since his last appearance on the podcast in October 2024, moving from Igniter, code generation, and project patching into AI agents, context layers, and custom engineering workflows. The conversation explores how deterministic tools and probabilistic LLMs can work together, and why the most useful AI systems often depend on the structure built around the model. We also discuss why teams should be careful about outsourcing the systems that hold their organizational knowledge and decision-making. He shares his perspective on owning the AI stack, building internal knowledge systems, training junior developers in an AI-augmented world, avoiding vendor lock-in, and why Elixir may be especially well-suited for safer agentic workflows. Zach will be a keynote speaker at ElixirConf 2026, September 10–11 in Chicago, and the Elixir Wizards will be there too! Join us and the broader Elixir community, and use promo code Elixirwizards for 10% off in-person or virtual tickets at https://elixirconf.com/ Key topics discussed in this episode: Zach Daniel's work with Ash, Igniter, and AI tooling How software development has changed since 2024 Deterministic code generation vs. LLM-generated code Combining structured tools with AI agents What it means to own your AI stack Organizational knowledge as an engineering “spinal column” Context layers, documentation, and internal workflows Building custom agentic systems Security, vendor lock-in, and open source LLMs Junior developers and apprenticeship in the AI era Why Elixir and the BEAM fit agentic workflows Links mentioned: Ash Framework https://ash-hq.org/ Igniter https://igniter.hexdocs.pm/ Phoenix Framework https://www.phoenixframework.org/ Remedy Meds https://remedymeds.com/ Keynote: Code Generators are Dead. Long Live Code Generators - Chris McCord | ElixirConf EU 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojL_VHc4gLk https://phoenix.hexdocs.pm/Mix.Tasks.Phx.Gen.Live.html LSP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol Claude Code https://claude.com/product/claude-code GitHub Actions https://github.com/features/actions Harness Engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_harness
Claude SDK https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview Zach's Twitter https://x.com/ZachSDaniel1 ElixirConf https://elixirconf.com/ AshConf https://luma.com/wz4z0iz6 Goatmire https://goatmire.com/Special Guest: Zach Daniel.

In this episode of The Product Podcast by Product School, Carlos González de Villaumbrosia sits down with Saral Jain, SVP of Engineering at Snapchat, the last independent social platform operating at global scale, with 956 million monthly active users closing in on the one billion mark and a community that opens the app more than 30 times a day. Saral joined Snap nine years ago, right around the IPO, after nearly a decade leading engineering teams at Amazon Web Services, and today leads all engineering for Snapchat, spanning product experiences, multi-cloud infrastructure, and the company's machine learning and generative AI platforms.What you'll learn:How Snap lets designers and product managers ship production code, with an AI agent running the first review pass on 90% of code within 5 minutesWhat Casper is: the AI teammate any team at Snap can invoke from Slack or Jira to build a working prototype from a conversationHow Snap turned company-wide AI adoption into business impact after early prototypes were being built and thrown awayHow lean startup squads mix engineers, designers, and data scientists to launch zero-to-one bets inside a mature platformKey takeaways:Quality control does not have to slow down who gets to ship, it has to change what reviews the work firstWidespread AI adoption is not the same as business impact, and the gap between the two is where most AI investment is being wasted right nowSmall, cross-functional teams with blurred roles can move faster than traditional org structures, even inside a billion-user companyCredits:Host: Carlos Gonzalez de VillaumbrosiaGuest: Saral JainSocial Links:Find out more about Product School hereFollow our Podcast on TikTok hereFollow Product School on LinkedIn here

The skills you build and the tools you master matter, but they aren't your most important asset when things go wrong — and something eventually will. In this episode, I work through why our careers and lives are governed more by avoiding catastrophic downside than by chasing upside, and why the single best tool for surviving a bad event isn't testing, insurance, or money — it's genuine trust with the people around you. Here's a question to sit with: what is the most important tool you have as a software engineer and as a leader? Most of us reach for something technical, but the answer runs deeper than that. In this episode, I start with the humble premortem — the practice of assuming something has already gone wrong so we can pressure-test our plans — and use it to explore why so much of our work is really about predicting and mitigating risk. From there, I make the case that because we're all exposed to a far larger downside than upside on any given day, the tool that matters most is the one that helps you survive the bad event you couldn't prevent: your relationships with other people, built on real trust. The Premortem as a Risk Lens: Learn why assuming failure ahead of time is such a useful counter to our natural optimism. Our plans quietly assume everything will go right, and a premortem forces us to inspect the gaps our best-laid plans never covered. Life Is Already About Predicting Risk: Nearly every action we take — stepping forward, eating the sushi, merging into traffic — is a small bet on an outcome we can't prove in advance. Much of what we're managing isn't even our own behavior, but the risk other people put us through. Why the Downside Dwarfs the Upside: On a typical Monday, your potential gain is limited, but your potential loss is not. A single catastrophic event — a breached customer, untested code shipped, an injury for an athlete — can undo far more than any single good action could ever build. This is why avoiding failure, not chasing brilliance, quietly shapes most successful careers. Likelihood Times Impact: Even a one-in-a-hundred-days negative event can cost you your job or your company a fortune, while very few actions could produce a commensurate gain like doubling your salary. Our behavioral aversion to risk turns out to be rational. Mitigate the Blast Radius, Not Just the Incidence: You can never be 100% certain a bad event won't happen. Good people who show up, stay reliable, and grow their skills still get laid off. So beyond reducing the likelihood of harm, you have to reduce its impact when it lands. Relationships Are the Real Safety Net: The most important tool in your belt isn't technical — it's your relationships with other human beings. Invested in honestly, they pay you back forever, and they're the thing you fall back on when the negative event you tried to prevent happens anyway. Trust Is the Core Currency: Genuine relationships require reality — real curiosity and care, not performed name-remembering, which people can see through. Trust compounds like an asset, while money spent to buy loyalty is gone the moment it's paid. When you hit a hard deadline or discover something's broken, a reservoir of trust is what lets people extend their best effort without you having to throw more money on the table. Episode Homework: Go invest in your relationships regardless of your current risk profile. Spend extra time in your one-on-ones, with your team, and in your retros — and get curious about what the people around you actually want, instead of assuming you already know.

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Flora Petterson, a self-taught Elixir developer, speaker, and maker, to talk about what happens when software systems forget and how developers can design for recovery. Flora shares her unconventional path to programming, from puppetry and creative work to discovering Elixir through Nerves and hardware projects. The conversation centers on her talk, “After the Crash,” which uses forgetting as a way to think about failure in software systems. Flora and the hosts explore process crashes, lost state, GenServer lifecycle, supervision, “let it crash,” and the difference between preventing failure and building systems that know how to recover. The episode also expands from software memory to team memory. Flora discusses documentation, institutional knowledge, mentorship, storytelling, and the challenge of preserving both what a system does and why decisions were made. Along the way, she shares how creative, low-stakes projects can help developers build deeper technical understanding and how the Elixir community can continue supporting new and self-taught engineers. Key topics discussed in this episode: Learning through experimentation with Nerves, hardware, and animatronics What it means for software systems to “forget” Failure, recovery, and lost state in the BEAM GenServer lifecycle and process recovery The nuance behind “let it crash” What supervision trees can and cannot protect Designing systems to recover from failure Deciding when state should be recovered or abandoned Documentation as organizational memory Capturing the “why” behind technical decisions Tests, docs, and examples as living knowledge Mentorship for self-taught and junior developers Storytelling as technical communication Creative projects as a path to deeper learning AI's impact on new developers Community, curiosity, and growth in Elixir Join us and the broader Elixir community at ElixirConf in Chicago this September 10-11. Use promo code Elixirwizards for 10% off in-person or virtual tickets at https://elixirconf.com/ Links mentioned: Embedded Elixir Nerve https://nerves-project.org/ Gig City Elixir Conference https://www.gigcityelixir.com/ Strange Loop Conference https://www.thestrangeloop.com/ Elixir Wizards S15E05 The State of Code Quality with Saša Jurić http://bit.ly/EWS15E05 One Art by Elizabeth Bishop https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art "Systems that run forever self-heal and scale" by Joe Armstrong (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNICGEwmXLU Conway's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law Dunning–Kruger effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect Elixir Wizards S15E10 Bruce Tate http://bit.ly/EWS15E10 Designing Elixir Systems with OTP by James Gray & Bruce Tate https://pragprog.com/titles/jgotp/designing-elixir-systems-with-otp/ GenServer Behavior https://elixir.hexdocs.pm/main/GenServer.html IEx https://iex.hexdocs.pm/IEx.html Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans https://www.domainlanguage.com/ GDPR General Data Protection Regulation https://gdpr-info.eu/ https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/02/23/NecessaryComments.html Living Documentation by Cyrille Matraire https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/living-documentation-continuous/9780134689418/ Exciting ExDoc talk by Flora Petterson 2025 CodeSync https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLr9FOARwzQ ExDoc https://ex-doc.hexdocs.pm/ The AI Coding Crisis Blog Series https://grox.io/blog/series/the-ai-coding-crisis/ Build Animatronics with Nerves talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ulurej4NTg Sam Aaron Sonic Pi https://sonic-pi.net/ https://scratch.mit.edu/ https://www.scratchfoundation.org/learn Nerves LiveBook https://github.com/nerves-livebook/ Hardware for Embedded Systems https://www.raspberrypi.com/ Goatmire Conference https://goatmire.com/

Vivek Raghunathan, SVP of Engineering @ Snowflake, joins the Engineering Leadership Community Podcast to discuss all things AI – most importantly, how Snowflake is utilizing AI internally to iterate faster with smaller, focused teams. Vivek shares how AI and lower coding costs ultimately help Snowflake implement tighter feedback loops between customer & eng teams to speed up product development rollout and how Snowflake empowers their orgs to upskill when it comes to AI. Jerry & Vivek also break down what quality leadership looks like across the board and the role of AI in shaping today's eng leaders.   ABOUT VIVEK RAGHUNATHAN Vivek Raghunathan is Snowflake's SVP of Engineering. Before joining Snowflake, Vivek co-founded Neeva, one of the first AI-native search engines for consumers, which was acquired by Snowflake in 2023. Prior to that, he spent more than a decade at Google, where he led YouTube monetization and helped launch Google Now.   ABOUT SNOWFLAKE Snowflake is the data and AI platform that many of the world's largest organizations rely on to power their most critical operations. Whether a bank is approving a loan, a retailer is optimizing its supply chain, or a hospital is bringing together patient data, Snowflake helps organizations unify data, apply AI, and make faster, more informed decisions. Today, over 13,900 companies rely on Snowflake to turn their data into business value, with enterprise-grade security, governance, and scale built-in.   SHOW NOTES: Where Snowflake is on their AI adoption journey (0:57) Using AI to help eng orgs meet maximum velocity (3:04) Defining traits of engineers who successfully leverage agentic tools (5:55) The benefit of cross collaborative skillsets for eng leaders (8:53) How AI is helping orgs test infrastructure rewrites effectively & less expensively (10:09) Discovering AI patterns @ Snowflake (11:44) Why Snowflake gives teams a week off to learn the necessary AI tools (16:37) Compressing the product dev cycle with the help of AI (18:28) Simplify eng teams / encourage fluidity of roles (19:49) Vivek's perspective on leveraging AI to best support customer needs (22:45) Building control planes to support enterprises (24:30) Methods for consolidating data / making it accessible to the entire org (27:18) How AI shapes what a quality leader looks like (30:39) The role of empathy in leadership (33:49) Rapid fire questions (35:08)   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Elixir Wizards Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Bruce Tate, founder of Groxio and longtime Elixir educator, to discuss career growth and mentorship in the age of AI. Bruce reflects on Elixir's evolution and explores how AI coding agents are changing the way developers learn, work, and advance. He explains his “anti-vibe coding” philosophy and recommends practices for maintaining code quality, arguing that many struggles attributed to junior developers are really failures of training and mentorship. Rather than using AI productivity gains to eliminate entry-level roles, Bruce challenges teams to reinvest that time in educating juniors to support their long-term career path. Bruce will expand on this conversation at ElixirConf 2026, September 10–11 in Chicago, and the Elixir Wizards will be there too! Join us and the broader Elixir community, and use promo code Elixirwizards for 10% off in-person or virtual tickets at https://elixirconf.com/ Topics discussed in this episode: The evolution of the Elixir ecosystem from conception to now Rethinking career growth and mentorship in the age of AI What “anti-vibe coding” means Functional core and imperative shell design OTP fundamentals and architectural literacy Managing AI-generated code and pull requests Mentorship beyond code review Developing engineering judgment API design as a core skill AI as a force multiplier for junior developers Reinvesting AI productivity gains in people Links mentioned: https://grox.io/ Seven Languages in Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks/ Programming Phoenix LiveView https://pragprog.com/titles/liveview/programming-phoenix-liveview/ BASIC Programming Language https://www.purebasic.com/ C++ Programming Language https://cplusplus.com/ COBOL Programming Language https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/cobol Fortran Programming Language https://fortran-lang.org/ Bitter Java by Bruce Tate https://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Java-Bruce-Tate/dp/193011043X Slashdot Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect Slashdot https://slashdot.org/ Java Programming Language https://www.java.com/en/ Ruby Programming Language https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ Lisp Programming Language https://lisp-lang.org/ Haskell Programming Language https://www.haskell.org/ Erlang Programming Language https://www.erlang.org/ Eric Meadows-Jönsson https://github.com/ericmj Machine Learning in Elixir by Sean Moriarity https://pragprog.com/titles/smelixir/machine-learning-in-elixir/ The AI Collective https://www.aicollective.com/ Elixir Pipe Operator https://operator.hexdocs.pm/readme.html Phoenix Framework https://www.phoenixframework.org/ Phoenix LiveView https://phoenix-live-view.hexdocs.pm/Phoenix.LiveView.html Broadway https://hex.pm/packages/broadway Designing Elixir Systems with OTP by James Edward Gray & Bruce Tate https://pragprog.com/titles/jgotp/designing-elixir-systems-with-otp/ The AI Coding Crisis Blog Series https://grox.io/blog/series/the-ai-coding-crisis/ Groxio Live https://grox.io/liveSpecial Guest: Bruce Tate.

Pat Casey was the first person besides founder Fred Luddy to write code at ServiceNow back in 2005, when it was called Glide and lived above a friend's restaurant. Twenty years later, he's CTO of a company where 85% of the Fortune 500 are customers, and until recently ran all of engineering: 10,000 people, 7,000 of them writing code. Almost nobody survives the journey from first engineer to public-company CTO. Pat did. Tobi and Pat dig into how ServiceNow actually works under the hood: a metadata processing engine running 90,000 single-tenant databases and over 25 billion queries an hour, why they bought a 15-person German database company and turned it into RaptorDB, and why tearing apart a 20-year-old monolith is harder than every senior engineer thinks. Then the conversation turns to AI. Pat bought 7,000 Windsurf licenses and measured a real, but unglamorous, 15% productivity bump, with a small subset of engineers going 5–6x while most barely changed. His thesis: AI coding is like playing five chessboards at once, and it's reshuffling the deck on who the top engineers will be. On agents, ServiceNow's answer is disarmingly simple: create a user called "AI Pat," assign it cases, and make it follow the exact same rules as humans because you should not trust an LLM more than you trust a human being. Topics covered: - From Atari 400 and floppy-disk jockey at Aldus to first engineer at ServiceNow - Scaling engineering from a stuffed fish on a monitor to 10,000 people — and the productivity trough at ~100 engineers - Single-tenant architecture: 90,000 databases, 25B+ queries/hour, and the monolith-to-Kubernetes migration - Why ServiceNow bought Swarm64 and built RaptorDB on a Postgres fork - 7,000 Windsurf licenses, Claude Code, and the real numbers on AI coding productivity - "AI Pat": the anthropomorphic model for enterprise agents outcomes, not toolkits - Whether AI kills seat-based SaaS, and why incumbents may have the inside track - Pat's advice to CTOs: this is not a time for excessive caution

Russ d'Sa (CEO & Co-founder @ LiveKit) joins the show to deconstruct the "Product Paradigm Shift" toward voice-driven interfaces and agent-centric UX . We dive into LiveKit's high-stakes scaling lessons: from powering OpenAI and Character AI's voice mode, how they navigated real time bottlenecks to hit the next level of scale, the architectural necessity of a multi-cloud strategy, and the foundations of a co-founder relationships that can effectively blend engineering & business strategy.   ABOUT RUSS D'SA Russ is a startup vet who founded his first company in the 2007 YC batch and was the 2nd frontend engineer hired at Twitter, Russ d'Sa now leads voice AI unicorn LiveKit. They're the backbone of ChatGPT Voice Mode, Salesforce Agentforce, Grok, and roughly 30% of US 911 calls.   ABOUT LIVEKIT LiveKit is an open source framework and cloud platform for building voice, video, and physical AI agents. It provides the tools you need to build agents that interact with users in realtime over audio, video, and data streams. Agents run on the LiveKit server, which supplies the low-latency infrastructure (including transport, routing, synchronization, and session management) built on a production-grade WebRTC stack. This architecture enables reliable and performant agent workloads.   SHOW NOTES: The product paradigm shift toward voice-driven apps and natural human-computer interfaces (2:44) Voice-apps in practice: How these trends impact the strategy of product building today (5:32) Early adopters: Why legacy industries like healthcare use voice AI (7:55) Reevaluating and building product experiences optimized for AI agents (12:52) How AI trends will impact roadmaps and Go To Market (18:16) The origin of LiveKit: Building real-time infra for the pandemic (21:07) The OpenAI moment: Powering the fastest-growing consumer app (23:48) Scaling with OpenAI: Navigating the challenges of balancing time-to-market with system design (25:39) The Character AI outage: Solving cross-continental state sync and hitting the next level of scale (29:00) The problem: When telemetry breaks first: Managing analytics and logging for millions of concurrent AI sessions (32:04) Architecting for resilience: Multi-cloud from day one and why treating infra as a utility matters (33:22) Co-founder dynamics: Blending engineering strategy with business outcomes (37:15) Rapid Fire Questions (40:51)   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trust in science and engineering has never mattered more. Aurecon's Tanya de Hoog speaks with Sir Peter Gluckman about the evolving role of science and engineering in addressing the world's most complex challenges. They discuss the value of remaining open to opportunity throughout your career, the importance of systems thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration, and how emerging technologies such as AI are reshaping the way knowledge is created and shared. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Mike Ratliff, co-founder and CTO of GridVar, to talk about the role software plays in the changing energy infrastructure. With over 30 years of experience in technology, Mike shares the path that took him from the early internet and cloud computing into energy and utility software, along with what he has learned about staying adaptable as the industry continues to shift. Mike explains why building software for the power grid comes with a very different set of constraints than building a typical web application and breaks down some of the challenges utilities are facing, including grid interconnection delays, power quality, increasing energy demand, and the growth of distributed energy resources. We also discuss demand response, microgrids, virtual power plants, battery storage, and how software can help utilities better understand and manage a grid that is becoming more complex. Mike also explains why Elixir and the BEAM are a strong fit for always-on energy systems, how an Erlang MQTT server first led him into the ecosystem, and what it takes to introduce Elixir inside an established organization. The episode closes with a broader look at AI-assisted development, the value of domain expertise, and why technical leaders still need communication, judgment, and a compelling story to move important ideas forward. Key topics discussed in this episode: Mike Ratliff's path from software to energy technology Lessons from three decades of technology industry change The value of generalists in modern software engineering Why good technical judgment remains difficult to replace Building software that interacts with physical infrastructure Why utility technology adoption can move slowly Understanding today's grid interconnection backlog Power quality challenges affecting new grid connections Using simulation to accelerate utility engineering studies Centralized and distributed approaches to grid management How solar energy creates the duck curve Using demand response to balance electricity consumption Edge devices supporting real-time grid coordination Microgrids and resilience in distributed energy systems Cybersecurity considerations for increasingly connected power grids Preparing utility infrastructure for extreme weather events Battery storage and the growth of renewable energy How virtual power plants coordinate distributed resources Why Elixir works well for energy software BEAM reliability for always-on utility infrastructure Discovering Elixir through Erlang and MQTT Building an early virtual power plant with Elixir Making the business case for an Elixir migration Why technical leadership also requires effective storytelling Links Mentioned: GridVAR https://www.gridvar.com/ GridPoint https://www.gridpoint.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout Demand Response: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response Virtual Power Plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_power_plant Microgrid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgrid Volts podcast: https://www.volts.wtf/

Engineering teams are building ten times — even a hundred times — more than they could two years ago. That's a win, but one not without challenges. Because the cost of building the right thing has climbed exponentially. In this episode of the ServiceNow Insights podcast, host Bobby Brill sits down with three leaders who are living this tension from three distinct angles: the content and design leader who first spotted the productivity math problem, the design VP pushing for discernment over speed, and the research lead keeping the human at the center. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━IN THIS EPISODE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DAVID HOARE — Group VP, Digital Content & Design, ServiceNow ANAND THARANATHAN — Group VP, Product Research & Insights, ServiceNow DANTLEY DAVIS — SVP of Design, ServiceNow ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Introduction & Guest Intros 1:13 David: The AI Philosophy — ChatGPT as genuine inflection point 3:02 David: Economic viability — why AI unlocks what was never possible before 3:12 Anand: Three-person startups scaling to $100M+ 3:45 Dantley: From 3D Studio Max to Jarvis — AI as human superpower 6:29 Anand: The customer north star hasn't changed 7:10 David: Engineering's survival problem — the 100x production gap 8:32 David: Andrew Ng's PM-to-engineer ratio + the cost of building wrong 9:40 Dantley: Nine concepts in an hour — design velocity and discernment 12:04 Dantley: The hip-hop tastemaker — slowing down as part of the process 14:20 David: Content governance — the fox guarding the hen house 16:21 Anand: Trust and the human-AI system 17:20 Dantley: AI surprise — UI tech stacks, feature completeness & hidden tech debt 20:21 18-Month Close — Anand, Dantley & David ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEY TAKEAWAYS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Engineering is the first function to see massive AI productivity gains — but that creates a gap every other function has to survive • The cost of building has dropped. The cost of building the wrong thing has climbed exponentially • Discernment is the bottleneck — not speed. Nine concepts in an hour still needs a tastemaker • AI quality is only as good as the content signals it receives — governance is not optional • The customer north star hasn't changed. AI just changes how fast you can move toward it • Customer value is the only metric that matters. Everything else is the path to it ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THIS PODCAST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Subscribe for new episodes on AI, product, engineering, and the future of work. #ServiceNow #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ProductDesign #SoftwareEngineering #ContentGovernance #DesignLeadership #AIStrategy #ProductManagement #EngineeringLeadership #TechLeadership #FutureOfWork #ServiceNowInsights #MachineLearning #Innovation #DesignThinking #TechPodcast #AIProductivity #DigitalTransformation #CustomerValueSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Engineering teams are building ten times — even a hundred times — more than they could two years ago. That's a win, but one not without challenges. Because the cost of building the right thing has climbed exponentially. In this episode of the ServiceNow Insights podcast, host Bobby Brill sits down with three leaders who are living this tension from three distinct angles: the content and design leader who first spotted the productivity math problem, the design VP pushing for discernment over speed, and the research lead keeping the human at the center. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━IN THIS EPISODE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DAVID HOARE — Group VP, Digital Content & Design, ServiceNow ANAND THARANATHAN — Group VP, Product Research & Insights, ServiceNow DANTLEY DAVIS — SVP of Design, ServiceNow ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Introduction & Guest Intros 1:13 David: The AI Philosophy — ChatGPT as genuine inflection point 3:02 David: Economic viability — why AI unlocks what was never possible before 3:12 Anand: Three-person startups scaling to $100M+ 3:45 Dantley: From 3D Studio Max to Jarvis — AI as human superpower 6:29 Anand: The customer north star hasn't changed 7:10 David: Engineering's survival problem — the 100x production gap 8:32 David: Andrew Ng's PM-to-engineer ratio + the cost of building wrong 9:40 Dantley: Nine concepts in an hour — design velocity and discernment 12:04 Dantley: The hip-hop tastemaker — slowing down as part of the process 14:20 David: Content governance — the fox guarding the hen house 16:21 Anand: Trust and the human-AI system 17:20 Dantley: AI surprise — UI tech stacks, feature completeness & hidden tech debt 20:21 18-Month Close — Anand, Dantley & David ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEY TAKEAWAYS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Engineering is the first function to see massive AI productivity gains — but that creates a gap every other function has to survive • The cost of building has dropped. The cost of building the wrong thing has climbed exponentially • Discernment is the bottleneck — not speed. Nine concepts in an hour still needs a tastemaker • AI quality is only as good as the content signals it receives — governance is not optional • The customer north star hasn't changed. AI just changes how fast you can move toward it • Customer value is the only metric that matters. Everything else is the path to it ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THIS PODCAST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Subscribe for new episodes on AI, product, engineering, and the future of work. #ServiceNow #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ProductDesign #SoftwareEngineering #ContentGovernance #DesignLeadership #AIStrategy #ProductManagement #EngineeringLeadership #TechLeadership #FutureOfWork #ServiceNowInsights #MachineLearning #Innovation #DesignThinking #TechPodcast #AIProductivity #DigitalTransformation #CustomerValueSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This conversation was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2025.https://gotocph.comSarah Wells - Independent Consultant & Author of "Enabling Microservice Success"Patrick Kua - Founder of the Tech Lead AcademyDaniel Terhorst-North - Originator of Behavior Driven Development (BDD) & Principal at Dan North & AssociatesRESOURCESSarahhttps://bsky.app/profile/sarahjwells.bsky.socialhttps://linkedin.com/in/sarahjwells1https://www.sarahwells.devPatrickhttps://hachyderm.io/@patkuahttps://twitter.com/patkuahttps://www.linkedin.com/in/patkuahttps://github.com/thekuahttps://patkua.comDanielhttps://bsky.app/profile/tastapod.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/tastapodhttps://github.com/tastapodhttps://mastodon.social/@tastapodhttp://dannorth.net/blogDESCRIPTIONEngineering leadership becomes significantly more complex in times of uncertainty. This conversation highlights how leaders must shift from rigid plans to adaptable thinking—balancing delivery, team well-being, and long-term direction while navigating constant change.A key takeaway is that great leadership isn't about having all the answers, but about creating clarity, trust, and resilience within teams. The speakers emphasize communication, context-awareness, and empowering engineers as the foundation for thriving—even when everything feels unstable.RECOMMENDED BOOKSSarah Wells • Enabling Microservice Success • https://amzn.to/4aa8xrvPatrick Kua • Talking with Tech Leads • https://amzn.to/3ECO3xBPatrick Kua • The Retrospective Handbook • https://amzn.to/4jpxxQNNeal Ford, Rebecca Parsons & Patrick Kua • Building Evolutionary Architectures • https://amzn.to/42qXJV2Mary Lynn Manns & Linda Rising • Fearless Change • https://amzn.to/49uuuneMary Lynn Manns & Linda Rising • More Fearless Change • https://amzn.to/4tX6GARBlueskyInstagramLinkedInFacebookCHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUSJoin this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/joinLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Ellyse Cedeno, founder of Heuristic Salvo and a software engineer and product leader with more than 25 years of experience across early internet platforms, gaming, health tech, and distributed systems. Ellyse shares the winding path that took her from early search engines and Netscape to game development, medical research at Mount Sinai, and eventually to Elixir. Along the way, she talks about staying curious over a long technical career, rediscovering joy through side projects, and why being willing to feel like a beginner again can be one of the most useful skills a developer can build. The conversation explores what it means to grow as an engineer in a world where AI tooling is becoming part of the everyday workflow. Ellyse makes the case that technical skill still matters, but the human parts of software development (like judgment, curiosity, communication, trust, and influence) are becoming increasingly important. We also talk about soft influence and how developers can create change inside organizations without relying on hard authority. Key Topics Discussed in this Episode: Ellyse's career path through early internet platforms, gaming, health tech, and distributed systems Moving from Netscape and search engines to medical research and software consulting Discovering Elixir through an interest in concurrent and distributed systems Why beginner's mindset still matters after decades in tech How neurodivergence, curiosity, and deep focus shape Ellyse's approach to programming Rediscovering joy in programming through side projects and experimentation Building an MMORPG game server in Elixir Exploring hardware, Nerves, and live theremin demos The role of passion projects in professional growth Protecting time for learning in productivity-focused environments Work-life balance differences between the U.S. and Europe How AI tools are changing expectations for modern developers Why AI does not replace judgment, taste, or technical understanding Understanding business needs instead of only focusing on technical preferences Introducing Elixir into a TypeScript-heavy organization Using Elixir microservices to solve specific technical problems What “soft influence” looks like in engineering teams Building trust through one-on-one conversations Knowing when influence is working and when it is not Negotiating technical decisions without turning them into power struggles The relationship between technical competence and interpersonal skill Managing imposter syndrome during pair programming and collaborative work Documentation as a visibility and ownership tool Community involvement, conference speaking, and finding your people Staying curious without burning out Why the human side of software development still matters Links Mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai https://icahn.mssm.edu/ Evernote https://evernote.com/ Joplin https://joplinapp.org/ Book: Elixir in Action by Saša Jurić https://www.manning.com/books/elixir-in-action-third-edition Book: The Little LISPer https://www.scribd.com/doc/263131641/The-Little-Lisper Ellyse's Goatmire Talk https://goatmire.com/speaker/ellyse-cedeno Nerves https://nerves-project.org/ xHain Hack & Makespace in Berlin https://x-hain.de/en/ https://cursor.com/ Haskell Programming Language https://www.haskell.org/ Java Programming Language https://www.java.com/en/ Clojure Programming Language https://clojure.org/ Scheme Programming Language https://www.scheme.org/ TypeScript Programming Language https://www.typescriptlang.org/ Nostrum Library https://hexdocs.pm/nostrum/intro.html Gleam Programming Language https://gleam.run/ Book: Getting Past No by William Ury https://www.williamury.com/getting-past-no/ “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hx4gdlfamo Ted Talk: Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY Ellyse's Codeberg https://codeberg.org/ellyxir Ellyse's Game Server Repo https://codeberg.org/ellyxir/gameserver Goatmire Elixir & NervesConf 2026 https://www.goatmire.com/

In this episode, Patrick discusses what it means to build an empowered career & explore creative career portfolios with Jean Hsu (VP of Engineering @ Range) and Cate Huston (author of The Engineering Leader and fractional CTO @ Twill). Both share their unique engineering leadership journeys & how they built creative career paths through exploration & finding room for optionality. We dissect the identity crisis that eng leaders face – whether they are ICs or managers – and how to navigate the tension between individual & team productivity, especially taking into consideration AI. Lastly, Jean and Cate share insights on letting go of societal norms, unique ways to expand your work, taking on bets, and incorporating your values into your career.   ABOUT JEAN HSU Jean is a builder, writer, coach, and fractional VPE at Circuit & Chisel. She was previously in leadership roles at Pulse, Medium, and Range, and also built out a leadership development company focused on engineers. She lives in Berkeley with her partner and three kids.   ABOUT CATE HUSTON Cate is the author of The Engineering Leader, fractional CTO at Twill, and engineering leadership coach. She was previously in leadership roles at DuckDuckGo and Automattic, and an advisor at Glowforge. She has been all over the world, but now lives in Ireland.   Check out DRI Your Career today and use promo code “ELCPODCAST” for 15% off any of Cate and Jean's three courses!   SHOW NOTES: What it means for creative career paths to become the norm (1:42) Navigating the tension between individual vs. team productivity (3:34) What an empowered career looked like in Jean's leadership journey (5:00) Cate's decision to craft her own career narrative (10:46) Redefining work-life balance (12:54) How to cultivate time to explore future projects & create room for optionality (15:59) Why it can be challenging to find the space / time to experiment (19:17) Let go of “societal shoulds” (23:37) Frameworks for building out your career portfolio (28:43) Unique ways to expand the type of work you can perform (30:23) Using AI tools to help orient your career & incorporate your values (34:35) Thinking about your career portfolio as bets (40:14) Final thoughts on what it means to build an empowered career (44:47) Rapid fire questions (46:13)   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send us Fan MailSix years ago, ENGINEERING CH∆NGE® started with a simple idea: create the kind of conversation you might have over coffee with a colleague about the challenges—and opportunities—facing engineering and other STEM organizations.In this season finale, my co-producer Quincy joins me behind the mic as we look back on six seasons of the podcast, the lessons  learned along the way, and what might be next for ENGINEERING CH∆NGE®. We discuss why I shifted to a solo format for Season 5, how the companion ebook Engineering for Society influenced the season's content, the realities of producing a podcast while balancing a demanding professional life, and why some of this season's most difficult conversations were also the most important.We also explore how the podcast has evolved from a focus on engineering education to broader conversations about organizational systems, leadership, culture, technology, and change—and why listeners both inside and outside STEM continue to connect with these topics.In this episode, we discuss:The origins of "Grab a Latte and Listen"How ENGINEERING CH∆NGE® has evolved over six seasonsWhy Season 5 shifted to a solo formatLessons learned about balancing impact, perfectionism, and self-careThe emotional story behind What Systems Lose When Fear LeadsWhy systemic challenges often appear in different forms but share common rootsHow the Engineering for Society ebook helped shape Season 5Possibilities for Season 6, including guest interviews, panel discussions, and research-to-practice conversationsWhy your feedback will help shape the future of the podcastI'd Love to Hear From YouWhat topics, guests, challenges, or conversations would be most valuable to you in Season 6?Use the fan mail link in the show notes and let me know. Your feedback will help shape the next chapter of ENGINEERING CH∆NGE®.ResourcesRequest your FREE copy of the ebook, Engineering for Society at EngineeringChangePodcast.comSupport the showENGINEERING CHΔNGE® is a registered trademark held by Dr. Yvette E. Pearson for producing and providing podcasts.

What communications skills do engineers and scientists need most right now? Recorded live at the CAETS conference, Aurecon's Lorna Bishop sits down with one of Australia's most celebrated science communicators, Tanya Ha. Together they explore how to tailor your message for different audiences, and how to leverage AI in communications without diluting personality. This episode of engineering Reimagined was recorded live at the CAETS conference. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we're joined by Eric Ries, creator of The Lean Startup, to discuss insights from his latest book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad… and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric shares what inspired him to write the book and why we need to move beyond and redefine what true profit looks like. He shares the history behind businesses transitioning from serving public interests to shareholder primacy and why leaving behind a people-first business approach can actually reduce profitability. Additionally, Eric discusses financial gravity, the “harder is easier” principle, and how these practices connect to AI & current engineering leadership challenges.   ABOUT ERIC RIES Over the last two decades, Eric Ries's ideas about continuous innovation, long-term thinking, governance, and market reform have reshaped company building and management practices. He is the creator of the Lean Startup method, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup; The Leader's Guide; and The Startup Way. As a founder, he has put his own ideas into practice with The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE); Answer.AI, an AI R&D lab; Virgil, a legal services startup; and IMVU. On The Eric Ries Show, he talks with world-class technologists, thought leaders, and executives building for the long-term. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: The inspiration behind Eric's new book Incorruptible (5:22) What it means to redefine profit (8:03) Understanding profit considerations like externality, ethics, and inputs (10:44) Why human life / value can never be an input factor of production (12:31) The history behind business practices benefitting the public (15:00) When businesses transitioned to shareholder primacy over public interest (17:16) Navigating the tension between mission vs. fiduciary responsibility (21:01) The role of financial gravity & shareholder primacy in the Silicon Valley bank story (25:04) Using Eric's book to build a mission-driven roadmap (29:12) How committing to a principled way of business can drive profitability (31:15) An example of the principle “harder is easier” (33:40) How this connects to AI & emerging eng leadership challenges (36:53)   LINKS AND RESOURCES Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great - Drawing on two decades of work with founders, CEOs, and investors, best-selling author Eric Ries reveals the forces that make companies vulnerable to destruction from within and without. Then he offers solutions that safeguard against them for the long-term. Incorruptible is the blueprint for companies that will prosper and endure without losing their soul. Its lessons and tools are designed to help founders, executives, investors, and citizens of all kinds build organizations – and a society – truly aligned with human flourishing. https://news.theleanstartup.com/ - Eric's newsletter with ideas about how and why to build companies focused on human flourishing — and stories of the people who are doing it. The Eric Ries Show - Founder, entrepreneur, and best-selling author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries discusses how to build profitable companies for the long-term benefit of society. Ries talks with world-class technologists, thought leaders, executives, and others working to create a new ecosystem of trustworthy organizations with limitless potential for growth and a deep commitment to purpose. Together, they uncover the tools and methods to ensure the next generation of companies are designed to maximize human flourishing for generations.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Elixir Wizards S15E04, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Somtochi Onyekwere, a software engineer at Fly.io and contributor to the Corrosion distributed database project, to talk about distributed systems, infrastructure resilience, and the growing fragility of centralized cloud platforms.   We discuss what recent outages across major providers reveal about modern infrastructure and why more teams are starting to rethink assumptions around reliability, failover, and system design. Somtochi explains how Fly.io approaches geographic distribution, eventual consistency, and replication across nodes, along with the trade-offs that come with building systems this way.   The conversation explores CRDTs (Conflict-free Replicated Data Types), consensus, split-brain prevention, and what actually happens when distributed systems fail in production. We also talk about testing strategies, rollback planning, property-based testing tools, and how teams can reduce blast radius when things inevitably go wrong.   Along the way, we discuss AI infrastructure, sandboxing AI agents, and how newer workloads may add pressure to already centralized systems. The episode closes with practical advice for developers who want to build more resilient applications without over-complicating their architecture. Topics Discussed in this Episode: Corrosion and distributed database replication Centralized cloud fragility and recent outage patterns Distributed systems versus traditional cloud architectures Multi-region deployment strategies for Phoenix applications CRDTs and conflict resolution in distributed systems Eventual consistency versus strict consistency tradeoffs Consensus, leader election, and split-brain prevention Testing failover and recovery scenarios Property-based testing and Antithesis Rollback planning for database schema migrations Reducing blast radius through system isolation Health checks and blue-green deployment strategies Fly Proxy request routing and replay behavior Cross-region synchronization and replication challenges Single points of failure inside “redundant” systems Backup restoration testing and disaster recovery planning Network partitions and failure handling in production Infrastructure monitoring and operational visibility AI infrastructure workloads and operational strain Sandboxing and securing AI agents Sprites and AI workflows at Fly.io Latency improvements from geographic distribution Distributed systems tradeoffs in real-world environments Transitive dependency failures across cloud providers Practical resilience strategies for modern engineering teams Links Mentioned: https://fly.io https://github.com/superfly/corrosion https://docs.gitops.weaveworks.org/ FluxCD https://fluxcd.io/ Fly.io Stateful Sandbox Environments https://sprites.dev/ Cloudflare Workers AI Inference Platform https://www.cloudflare.com/products/workers-ai/ “An AI Agent Just Destroyed Our Production Data. It Confessed in Writing” Twitter post from PocketOS founder: https://x.com/lifeof_jer/status/2048103471019434248 Oct 2025 AWS Outage https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/24/amazon-reveals-cause-of-aws-outage Dec 2025 Cloudflare Outage https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/05/another-cloudflare-outage-takes-down-websites-linkedin-zoom July 2025 Crowdstrike Outage https://www.ibm.com/think/news/recent-crowdstrike-outage-what-you-should-know March 2026 Stryker Cyber Attack https://www.stryker.com/us/en/about/news/2026/a-message-to-our-customers-03-2026.html https://aws.amazon.com/ https://cloud.google.com/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us https://fly.io/docs/elixir/ CRDTs!! https://smartlogic.io/podcast/elixir-wizards/s13-e03-local-first-liveview-svelte-pwa/ https://antithesis.com/docs/resources/property_based_testing/ https://hex.pm/packages/proper

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of ENGINEERING CH∆NGE®, I take a systems-centered look at one of the biggest conversations happening across engineering organizations and society right now: AI.While many organizations are focused on AI models, tools, productivity, and technical readiness, this episode explores a deeper question:What happens when AI is introduced into systems that already struggle with communication gaps, lack of trust, inequitable processes, or flawed decision-making?Drawing on examples from industry and recent research, we'll discuss:• The disconnects AI adoption is exposing between leaders and employees• How AI acts as an amplifier within organizational systems• Why “human in the loop” must involve accountability, not just oversight• How people-centered organizational systems shape AI outcomes• Systems-level questions leaders should be asking before scaling AI adoptionI also introduce MESA® (Measure, Evaluate, Strategize, Act), a framework we use at The PEER Group to help organizations navigate change and continuous improvement.If you've been thinking about AI primarily as a technology issue, this episode invites you to consider the organizational systems shaping what AI will ultimately produce.Grab a latte and listen.Request your free copy of the ebook Engineering for Society at engineeringchangepodcast.com.If this conversation resonates with you, follow ENGINEERING CH∆NGE® and leave a five-star review to help more engineers and leaders join the conversation.Support the showENGINEERING CHΔNGE® is a registered trademark held by Dr. Yvette E. Pearson for producing and providing podcasts.

In this episode, Geddes Munson (SVP of Engineering @ Affirm) joins us to discuss operational / engineering excellence, scaling, and AI-native transformation! We explore Affirm's approach to operational and engineering excellence and how a 2024 outage became a turning point in refining that focus. We deconstruct “AI retooling week”, the internal tools it inspired (including an incident tracing system), how the AI-native transition is impacting operational / engineering excellence, and how to connect these projects to business goals. Plus, we take a look at their early work building in agentic commerce, infrastructure decisions they made years ago setting them up for success now, how they're thinking about designing for agent-first experiences.   ABOUT GEDDES MUNSON Geddes Munson serves as Affirm's SVP, Engineering. Previously, Geddes held several engineering leadership roles at Affirm, including oversight of the merchant engineering group, where he was responsible for the development of Affirm's solutions for key partners including Amazon, Shopify and Walmart. Prior to Affirm, Geddes held various technical leadership roles at rapidly growing startups including Mixpanel, SingleStore and EasyPost. He received his B.A. from Haverford College, where he started the Linux club on campus. Geddes lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: Defining operational excellence & what it looks like @ Affirm (4:36) Understand why your company / product matters to your customers (8:11) Key pivot points around engineering excellence @ Affirm (11:10) Creating a genuine culture change of operational / engineering excellence (14:27) Adopting agentic models @ Affirm (16:30) Navigating the balance between transformation, safety & reliability (18:30) Affirm's AI retooling week & hackathon setup (20:57) How the hackathon helped quickly change the company culture (23:15) Ensuring your practices serve your overall organizational vision & goals (26:11) Insights on scaling & increasing CICD investment @ Affirm (28:28) Approaches to building agentic commerce products (30:11) Strategies for building an agent-first experience (33:33) Bridging the gap between engineering & business goals / outcomes (35:44) Rapid fire questions (38:46)   LINKS AND RESOURCES 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation - New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today's world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - a best-selling 2010 memoir by former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh detailing his entrepreneurial journey and outlines his core philosophy: building a phenomenal corporate culture and focusing on the happiness of employees and customers ultimately drives long-term profits and business success.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Season 15 episode 3, Charles Suggs sits down with Greg Medland, aka “The Elixir Fixer,” to talk about the current state of hiring and the software jobs market in 2026.   Greg shares what he's seeing from both sides of the hiring process as an Elixir-focused recruiter, from shifting company expectations to the growing importance of specialization, communication skills, and real-world product thinking. We discuss how the market has changed since the 2021–2022 hiring boom, why things feel more uncertain today, and how developers are adapting to a slower, more competitive landscape.   The conversation also explores how AI is affecting hiring workflows, résumé quality, technical interviews, and even the rise of fraudulent candidates. Greg explains why human relationships and reputation still matter more than ever, especially in smaller ecosystems like Elixir where community connections carry real weight.   Along the way, we talk about what junior developers are up against, why senior engineers with domain expertise continue to stand out, and what developers can do to position themselves more effectively in today's market. Greg shares practical advice for building a sustainable career, developing a clear professional identity, and navigating a rapidly changing industry.   Topics discussed in this episode: The current state of the Elixir job market Hiring trends and market shifts since 2021–2022 How AI is changing hiring and recruiting workflows Fraudulent candidates and AI-generated résumés Domain expertise vs. generalist engineering skills Product thinking and customer-focused development What companies are looking for in 2026 Junior developer challenges in the current market Why senior specialists remain in demand Networking and relationship-building in tech Open source contributions and visibility in the Elixir community Standing out in a crowded hiring environment Résumé quality and application strategies The role of personal branding for developers Remote work trends and geographic hiring patterns Technical interview expectations and evaluation changes Startup vs. enterprise hiring differences Human connection in an increasingly automated industry Career resilience and long-term positioning Building a sustainable software engineering career   Links mentioned: Socially Responsible Recruitment https://sr2rec.com/en/ Greg's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/elixirfixer/ Greg's email address: greg@sr2rec.com

Andrew McNamara, Director of Applied Machine Learning @ Shopify, joins the ELC podcast to share insights on building agentic platforms at scale, like Sidekick, that must keep reliability for its users at the forefront. Andrew describes the building philosophy behind Shopify and what it means to cultivate a culture of prototype-first while prioritizing hiring early-stage talent. We cover Sidekick's development journey and how user feedback impacted its product vision, why evaluation is so important for determining ground truth sets, and the benefit of user-driven use cases. Andrew also dissects how they went about making product design decisions, such as building proactive agents and identifying subagent specializations.   ABOUT ANDREW MCNAMARA Andrew McNamara is Director of Applied Machine Learning at Shopify, where he leads the team behind Shopify Sidekick, an AI co-founder that gives merchants access to the e-commerce expertise they need to run and grow their business. With 16 years of experience building AI assistants, he brings a rare combination of applied research depth and production-scale thinking to some of the hardest problems in AI: getting systems to work reliably for people who depend on them. Andrew's work pushes Shopify to measure AI quality by whether it achieves what the user set out to do, a core standard in building AI that merchants trust. Outside Shopify, he runs Setting North, a small Canadian maple syrup brand built on the same platform he helps make for everyone else.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: How Shopify utilizes reflexive AI & Andrew's building philosophy (2:38) Developing a prototype-first company culture (5:07) Andrew's reflections on building AI-enabled projects like Sidekick at scale (7:25) Translating customer surveys into Sidekick's product vision (9:34) Key inflection points while scaling out Sidekick (11:23) Strategies for evaluation / building a ground truth set (13:26) Analyzing the good & bad within ground truth sets (15:27) Shopify's system openness model to drive user-discovered use cases (17:47) How subagents fit into the Sidekick's model (19:55) Prioritization conversations around subagent specializations (23:06) Designing an agent with high-impact prompt optimization (27:22) Considerations for building highly reliable systems (29:40) Andrew's perspective on latency (31:24) Rapid fire questions (33:49)   LINKS AND RESOURCES Cradle - a New York Times best-selling series from Will Wight following a character's growth as he goes from one of the weakest users of his world's magic to among the strongest. The series features an original magic system inspired by Chinese cultivation and martial arts novels, with a heavy emphasis on anime-style super-powered battles.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Season 15 episode 2, Elixir Wizards Sundi Myint and Charles Suggs chat with Micah Cooper to talk about distributed systems, data replication, and what it actually looks like to build these ideas in Elixir.   Micah shares his journey from Ruby to Elixir and walks us through Visor, a library he's building based on the Viewstamps replication algorithm. Inspired by systems like TigerBeetle, Visor explores how you can replicate state across nodes using GenServers, giving you fault tolerance and recovery without relying entirely on traditional database patterns.   We talk about the difference between distributed systems and data replication, where things tend to get misunderstood, and what changes when you start thinking about state this way. The conversation also touches on event sourcing, tradeoffs in system design, and how Elixir's distributed model makes some of these concepts more approachable than you might expect.   Along the way, we talk about building for curiosity, experimenting with new ideas, and how projects like this push the ecosystem forward.   Topics discussed in this episode: Building Visor and working with the Viewstamps replication model Replicating GenServer state across nodes Distributed systems vs. data replication Lessons from TigerBeetle and financial system design Event sourcing challenges and tradeoffs Rethinking database-first architectures Snapshotting, recovery, and fault tolerance The role of Elixir's distributed model Experimentation, learning, and building for curiosity   Links mentioned: Micah's GitHub https://github.com/mrmicahcooper Micah's GitLab https://gitlab.com/mrmicahcooper The Visor repository: https://gitlab.com/mrmicahcooper/visor Visor Hex Package https://hex.pm/packages/visor Ruby on Rails https://rubyonrails.org/ Phoenix LiveView Framework https://www.phoenixframework.org/ Zig Programming Language https://ziglang.org/ TigerBeetle https://tigerbeetle.com/ TigerBeetle internal docs https://github.com/tigerbeetle/tigerbeetle/tree/main/docs/internals The BEAM https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/the-beam-erlangs-virtual-machine/ GenServer https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/GenServer.html Apache Kafka https://github.com/apache/kafka RabbitMQ https://www.rabbitmq.com/ Redpanda https://www.redpanda.com/ SQL https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/structured-query-language Kubernetes https://kubernetes.io/ YAML https://yaml.org/ Nomad Workload Orchestrator https://developer.hashicorp.com/nomad Flutter https://flutter.dev/ Commanded https://hexdocs.pm/commanded/Commanded.html Go Programming Language https://go.dev/ Clojure Programming Language https://clojure.org/ Nebulex https://hexdocs.pm/nebulex/Nebulex.html Mnesia https://www.erlang.org/doc/apps/mnesia/mnesia.html Cachex https://hexdocs.pm/cachex/Cachex.html libgraph https://hexdocs.pm/libgraph/Graph.html Horde https://hexdocs.pm/horde/Horde.Registry.html NocFree split keyboard https://www.nocfree.com/ Micah's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/micah-cooper-4a737560/ 

Inbal Shani (CPO and Head of R&D @ Twilio) deconstructs the transformation of the R&D org at Twilio! We explore the shift from a GM-led model to a unified platform strategy and “why structure must always follow strategy.” Inbal shares her framework for moving from output-focused metrics to input goals, prioritizing “time-to-value,” and the nuances of measuring AI products. We discuss using "R&D roadshows" as a strategic company transformation tool and why engineering leaders must master product positioning. We also dive into mental models for future-proofing your business, from "working backwards" to solve customer problems, to embedding systems thinking into the DNA of your engineering team, and critical questions to identify and optimize decisions around your company's moat.    ABOUT INBAL SHANI As Chief Product Officer, Inbal leads Twilio's R&D organization, encompassing product, engineering, and R&D operations. She is dedicated to driving platform-wide innovation, empowering customers, and delivering transformative, customer-focused solutions.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: Catalysts for Twilio's R&D transformation and the shift away from organizational silos (2:49) Strategy Drives Structure: The lightbulb moment at a strategy offsite that demanded structural change to execute vision (5:14) Why structure must follow strategy and creating a "change-constant" culture (7:23) Implementing the “working backwards” methodology and the internal power of the PRFAQ (13:52) Tactical ways to filter customer signals and find real unmet problems versus feature requests (16:35) Shifting from output-focused goals to input goals and prioritizing "Time to Value" (18:35) Using weekly product reviews to align metrics with qualitative customer feedback (21:34) Measuring AI Products: Why AI products require behavior-based measurement instead of traditional binary testing (23:24) Building security by design with layered protection for AI-generated code environments (26:09) Mental models for future-proofing your business by acting as a "fortune teller" for needs (28:45) The R&D Roadshow: Enabling the entire company on new ways of working through storytelling (32:28) Why engineering leaders must master product positioning to bridge the gap to market (38:33) Relatable storytelling: Explaining Twilio's value to your parents to sharpen your pitch (41:47) Rapid Fire Questions (43:14)   LINKS AND RESOURCES How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion - In this lively journey through human psychology, bestselling author and creator of the You Are Not So Smart podcast David McRaney investigates how minds change--and how to change minds.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rajat Monga, CVP AI Frameworks @ Microsoft, joins the podcast to discuss his leadership and founder journey, from Google Brain / Tensorflow to inference.io and back to Microsoft. He dissects what it means to refound vs. start from scratch, the value of the open source community, and strategies for discovering what problem to solve when going the startup route. We also cover how to determine your users' hidden incentives and what that means for both product development & marketing, along with navigating the balance between a product's usefulness and consumers' willingness to pay for it. Additionally, Rajat shares about what he's currently up to at Microsoft and the emerging ML / AI technologies he's most excited about.   ABOUT RAJAT MONGA Rajat Monga is responsible for enabling an efficient AI stack at Microsoft from cloud to the edge. Before joining Microsoft, Rajat was founder and CEO of Inference.io, a smart analytics platform powered by AI. During his decade-long tenure at Google, he co-founded and led TensorFlow, and was a founding member of Google Brain. He's built out and led many engineering teams, and designed large scale distributed systems including web scale crawling and eBay's search engine. Rajat is a graduate of IIT Delhi.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: Rajat's journey with Google Brain: Scaling deep learning from single PCs to thousands of machines with Jeff Dean & Andrew Ng (2:57) Moving from Google Brain to TensorFlow: Why new hardware and architectures required a total system rebuild (6:02) The "refounding" question: Choosing between starting from scratch or evolving an existing system (8:33) Why Google open-sourced TensorFlow to set industry standards and avoid supporting external copies (10:16) How open-source enabled global innovation, from Japanese cucumber sorting to African plant health (12:02) Transitioning as a leader: Why Rajat left Google during the height of TensorFlow to found a company (13:57) The discovery phase at inference.io: Navigating the pivot from IoT into solving data analytics gaps (15:31) Lessons on PMF: Moving beyond a "useful" product to one that solves a truly critical customer pain point (16:52) Why habits are harder to change than technology and the challenge of competing with established workflows (21:02) Marketing strategies: Tailoring personas for top-down prestige versus bottom-up personal efficiency (23:19) Deciding when to stop: A founder's framework for re-evaluating bets based on current knowledge (24:57) Rajat's new role at Microsoft: Overseeing Edge infrastructure and large-scale Cloud AI inference (27:46) Dissecting ML edge strategy: Using ONNX Runtime to unify AI performance across Windows, iOS, and Android (30:02) Edge AI trends: Shifting from experimental models to production models optimized for cost and privacy (31:20) The future of Edge: How on-device processing will power AI in robotics, smart glasses, and wearables (33:23) Scaling inference: Treating multi-GPU clusters like a distributed operating system for AI models (34:25) Rapid fire questions (37:45)   LINKS AND RESOURCES Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World - Innovation expert Scott Anthony masterfully weaves together the fascinating stories behind history's most transformative disruptions—from ninth-century China to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley. Through eleven pivotal innovations, including the printing press, mass-produced automobiles, the McDonald's revolutionary food system, and the iPhone, Anthony reveals the hidden patterns behind world-changing breakthroughs.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Neal Ford: software architect, author, speaker, and independent consultant (formerly 20+ years at ThoughtWorks), joins Tobias to explore what happens to software architecture when AI agents write the code. We unpack the critical distinction between behavior and capabilities: why everyone focuses on what code does, but too few think about scalability, security, and responsiveness. Neal introduces architectural fitness functions as the essential guardrail for agentic systems, and explains why non-deterministic code generation demands deterministic tests. Finally, we dig into legacy modernization, the Dreyfus scale applied to LLMs, ephemerality as the new architectural dimension, and why AI is a multiplier, not a replacement, for experienced engineers.

Enterprise customers demand 99.9% availability, regardless of how the underlying software is built. In this episode, Murali Swaminathan (CTO @ Freshworks) discusses how enterprises actually win with AI! We explore the “Architecture of Predictability” – proactive architectural safeguards to scale “responsible AI by design” across a global organization serving 75,000 customers. Murali shares his leadership playbook for implementing the technical safeguards and product trust controls that empower hundreds of engineers to build safely. We also dive into the shift from deterministic flowcharts to “workflows with a brain” and why backend systems engineers are the secret bedrock of agentic products. Plus, Murali deconstructs the dual evolution required of modern leaders: mastering strategic thinking at the business level while cultivating systems thinking at the engineering level.   ABOUT MURALI SWAMINATHAN Murali Swaminathan joined Freshworks as Chief Technology Officer in September 2024. Murali is responsible for Freshworks' technology roadmap and strategy, leading the company's global engineering and architecture teams. With over 30 years of experience in software engineering, he has held leadership roles at ServiceNow, Recommind (now OpenText), and CA Technologies (now Broadcom), where he delivered scalable, secure solutions that enabled digital transformation and business agility. Murali holds a master's degree in Software Engineering Management from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor's degree in electronics and instrumentation from Annamalai University in India.   SHOW NOTES: Freshworks' operating context: Engineering for 75,000 global customers (2:09) Navigating the tension between rapid AI adoption and enterprise-grade reliability (4:58) Breaking the "Positive Scenario" Trap: Using AI to automate negative test cases and corner-case detection (6:40) Why Responsible AI is a competitive advantage: Building "kill switches" and trust gates (8:31) Responsible AI by Design: Moving from reactive compliance to proactive architectural safeguards (10:48) Technical safeguards: Leveraging hyperscaler frameworks for model compliance and data anonymization (13:39) Product Trust Controls: Demonstrating reliability through role-based access and thresholds (16:25) Why engineering leaders should experiment in small teams before global rollout (20:35) Simulating Chaos: Using Business Continuity Planning (BCP) to test AI system resilience (22:13) Workflows with a brain: Transitioning from deterministic flows to agentic runtime decisions (24:16) The AI Team Profile: Why backend system engineers, not just data scientists, are the bedrock of agentic products (29:25) Cultivating a mindset shift toward agentic system orchestration (32:10) The shift to systems thinking: How engineering roles evolve from "building pieces" to managing end-to-end system flows (33:38) How to approach strategic business thinking as an engineering leader (36:43) Rapid Fire Questions: Guy Kawasaki's "Think Remarkable" and the best way to predict the future (38:23)   LINKS AND RESOURCES Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference - Tech titan and creator of the Remarkable People podcast Guy Kawasaki delivers a practical, tactical, and sometimes radical discussion of how to make a difference in the world and live a fulfilling life.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you know if you're a good leader? In engineering, like any profession, leadership is so much more than just getting your team to do what they're told. In this episode of Navigating Major Programmes, Riccardo and Shormila shift their focus to a broader topic: people management. Reaching beyond assessments and management styles, the two long-time leaders unpack their experiences so far. They explore the difference between managing contractors and direct reports, the importance of feedback delivery, and the need for empathy that flows in both directions—up and down the chain of command.Their conversation winds through self-reflection, organizational structures, and the dearth of training for technical experts thrust into people-management roles as the only path for advancement. Along the way, they discuss how leadership evolves over time (and often through mistakes), why emotional intelligence takes deliberate work, and what makes people management uniquely demanding—especially when you're delivering hard news while still remembering there's a human on the other end.They also dig into the realities of leading within complex systems: how to motivate and retain people across generations, why “tone from the top” shapes culture more than any slogan, and how leaders can adapt their style to the individual in front of them. Therapy, organizational design, and the impact of AI on early-career technical roles all receive their due consideration in a thoughtful, candid episode that recognizes leadership is a lifelong practice—not a just title.Key takeawaysThe role of empathy in business, relationships, and company culture;Why self-reflection is essential to every leader's development;Recognizing when to adhere to and when to throw out the org chart;Navigating disconnection from direct reports in enormous corporations;The negative impact of distilling rational reasoning as decisions descend from the top.Quote“Creating corporate culture…all starts from the leader—the tone from the top.” - Shormilla ChaterjeeThe conversation doesn't stop here—connect and converse with our community via LinkedIn:Follow Navigating Major Programmes: https://www.linkedin.com/company/navigating-major-programmes/Read Riccardo's latest at www.riccardocosentino.comFollow Shormila Chatterjee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shormilac/Follow Riccardo Cosentino: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosentinoriccardo/

How much has changed in AI during the last two years? Aurecon’s Dave Mackenzie revisits a past conversation he had on the Engineering Reimagined podcast with Nomic CEO Andriy Mulyar. They discuss how AI adoption in complex infrastructure environments has evolved from early experimentation to practical implementation. This episode also considers how roles are changing, with engineers increasingly acting as orchestrators, and reflects on the skills and capabilities needed for future-proofing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send us Fan MailIs engineering really a meritocracy?We're taught that hard work, strong performance, and clear metrics determine who advances. But what if the system isn't as objective as it seems?In this episode of ENGINEERING CH∆NGE®, I break down how “merit” is often interpreted, or even manufactured, not measured and how the systems we trust to evaluate performance can actully distort it.In this episode: Why performance without context is incomplete and often misinterpreted.How shifting standards and uneven scrutiny reshape who advances.What happens when metrics become targets and start driving behavior instead of reflecting impact.Through real-world examples - from internship decisions to NSF review panels - this episode reveals how evaluation systems can manufacture merit instead of measure it.If you've ever questioned how decisions really get made in academia, engineering, or leadership, this conversation will change how you see performance, potential, and fairness.Ask yourself: Are we rewarding true impact, or just what's easiest to measure?Grab a latte and listen.If this conversation resonates with you, follow ENGINEERING CH∆NGE® and leave a five-star review to help more engineers and leaders join the conversation.Visit the ENGINEERING CH∆NGE® podcast website to learn more and to request a free copy of my new brief, Engineering for Society.Support the showENGINEERING CHΔNGE® is a registered trademark held by Dr. Yvette E. Pearson for producing and providing podcasts.

Jon Hyman (CTO & Co-Founder @ Braze) returns to the podcast to share how he balances a mature, public-company roadmap with visionary AI innovation! We deconstruct Braze's quantitative "Product Health" framework - a scoring system used to resolve competing prioritizations and mandate technical remediation. We also discuss shifting engineering leaders to think like GMs, how to realign teams by connecting abstract “vision” to specific releases, goals & outcomes. Plus, Jon's three-tier mental model for AI products, how to identify AI features that actually drive revenue, and reimaging your product for future channels, teams, and skills.   ABOUT JON HYMAN Jon Hyman is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Braze, the customer engagement platform that delivers messaging experiences across push, email, in-app, and more. He leads the charge for building the platform's technical systems and infrastructure as well as overseeing the company's technical operations and engineering team. Prior to Braze, Jon served as lead engineer for the Core Technology group at Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund. There, he managed a team that maintained 80+ software assets and was responsible for the security and stability of critical trading systems. Jon met cofounder Bill Magnuson during his time at Bridgewater, and together they won the 2011 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. Jon is a recipient of the SmartCEO Executive Management Award in the CIO/CTO Category for New York. Jon holds a B.A. from Harvard University in Computer Science.   This episode is brought to you by xMatters! xMatters automates the entire incident lifecycle with their purpose-built AI powered workflow, giving your team the context they need to stop disruptions before they start and minimize resolution times. Head over to xmatters.com to learn more!   SHOW NOTES: Braze's operating environment & key focus on product health / roadmap (2:58) What's next for Braze: Research-driven innovation in the AI era (6:16) Ensuring customers utilize the full breadth of features (9:42) The "Swarming" strategy: Reducing engineering escalation tax through support collaboration (14:19) Shifting engineering leadership think like GMs: Moving from completion goals to business outcomes like revenue, growth rates & regional differences (17:29) How engineering leaders can increase business IQ by understanding margins and adoption (18:20) Deconstructing misalignment, the abstract nature of product vision, and connect teams to tangible business outcomes, goals, and specific releases (22:02) Management infrastructure: Quarterly product health reporting and trending metrics (23:20) Forming a mental model for company maturity, building a visionary roadmap, and more innovative engineering initiatives (25:34) Frameworks for AI Decision-Making: Identifying AI features that drive revenue vs. those that only improve stickiness (31:55) Reimagining your product based on different personas, new channels, “AI omniboxes”, and teams / skills of the future (35:44) Breaking down team silos, customer engagement as a shared responsibility, and the future of full-stack roles orchestrating outcome-based workflows & automations (41:50) Rapid fire questions (45:10)   LINKS AND RESOURCES Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green: A historical look at how the disease has shaped the world braze.com   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss what effective leadership looks like across three organizational archetypes: product-led, business-led, and design-led companies with Sebastiano Armeli (Engineering Leadership @ Meta). Drawing from his leadership journey at places like  Meta, Spotify, Snap, and PayPal, Sebastiano deconstructs the situational leadership frameworks required to thrive in different environments. Plus we discuss how AI is moving managers from implementation to architecture, why the next bottleneck is managing the overhead of high-velocity experimentation, and the future of team topology where AI enables a single leader to oversee high-scale teams of 30–50 people. Whether you are scaling a design-driven startup or navigating a complex business-led enterprise, this conversation provides a framework for aligning your leadership style with your organization's core incentives.   ABOUT SEBASTIANO ARMELI Sebastiano Armeli is an engineering leader currently at Meta. He has previously served as a Director of Engineering at Upwork and held leadership roles at companies such as Pinterest, PayPal, Snap, and Spotify. His work has spanned diverse domains including shopping, crypto, messaging, video creation, and ads. Sebastiano is passionate about building healthy engineering cultures, mentoring the next generation of leaders, and supporting teams through periods of growth and change. He mentors engineering managers and senior engineers, enjoys speaking at conferences, and shares his perspectives on leadership in his Substack, The Healthy Engineering Leader. He also serves on the board of a community-owned grocery store. In all his work, Sebastiano takes a pragmatic, people-first approach to leadership, focusing on clarity, continuous improvement, and long-term impact.   This episode is brought to you by xMatters! xMatters automates the entire incident lifecycle with their purpose-built AI powered workflow, giving your team the context they need to stop disruptions before they start and minimize resolution times. Head over to xmatters.com to learn more!   SHOW NOTES: Deconstructing company archetypes: A framework for product-led organizations (2:03) Strategic leadership practices for succeeding in product-first cultures (7:33) Leveraging data and business metrics to influence product strategy (9:35) Case Study: The story and leadership lessons behind building Spotify's Ad Studio (11:12) Rapid prototyping: Applying a hackathon mindset to product development (13:16) How AI is reshaping product-led orgs: Clearing the feature backlog, scaling experimentation and velocity (16:01) Balancing iteration velocity and product quality with AI (18:12) Sebastiano's observations on effective leadership in business led orgs (19:49) Design-led dynamics: Anticipating the impact of AI on creative-first orgs (23:24) Maintaining engineering excellence within design-driven constraints (25:40) Cultivating high-alignment, valuable design partnerships (27:01) The role of metrics and data in design-focused decision making (28:33) Emerging AI capabilities enhancing leadership leverage (31:16) Scaling management: The potential for 30-50 person teams via AI assistance (33:58) The ethical imperative: Adopting AI responsibility within engineering teams (35:53) Rapid fire questions (37:12)   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Explore how climate leadership measures should be a routine part of decision-making with Emeritus Professor Mark Howden and Aurecon’s Dr Ben McGarry. Together they discuss the role engineers play in shaping a low-carbon and resilient future; and why starting with values, incorporating systems thinking, and highlighting long-term benefits all matter when engaging stakeholders and delivering meaningful change. This episode of Engineering Reimagined was recorded live at the 2025 CAETS conference. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Live from the Vercel recording studio, Lindsey Simon (VP Engineering @ Vercel) joins us to deconstruct the evolution of management craft and career growth strategies! We dissect the practice of live all-hands demos as a tool for context, accountability and inspiration. Plus, Lindsey's "vote with your wallet" framework for career strategy, how Lindsey's open source project inspired him to apply to Vercel, and why the most effective VPs are building hobby projects to maintain AI competency and empathy for non-technical users.   ABOUT LINDSEY SIMON Lindsey Simon is VP of Engineering at Vercel. Making the Web better has been his lifelong career ambition. Prior to Vercel, Lindsey spent seven years at Google, where he helped launch App Engine as an original core team member, and worked as a tech lead on the Google Translate and Web Performance teams. Lindsey has lived in San Francisco for the past 15 years, and his creative hobbies (beyond coding) include writing music and hunting for wild mushrooms.   This episode is brought to you by xMatters! xMatters automates the entire incident lifecycle with their purpose-built AI powered workflow, giving your team the context they need to stop disruptions before they start and minimize resolution times. Head over to xmatters.com to learn more!   SHOW NOTES: The evolution of Vercel's all hands to demo days: using live show-and-tell to maintain context and inspire the team (2:4p) Accountability for what's real: Why live visual demos help engineering teams with real-time workflow adjustments (4:36) Strategies for creating a successful live visual demo without over-rehearsing (6:20) Lindsey's career inflection point: Navigating the transition from a large ecosystem at Salesforce to a mission-driven startup (10:08) Career advice: Vote with your wallet and go somewhere with pre-existing PMF that feeds your ambition (12:33) The "Janitor" Mindset: Why prioritizing the company's mission over a specific job title can lead to unique opportunities (14:36) How Lindsey's open source hobby project led to a code-first interaction with @ Vercel (19:17) Vercel's "Dig Deep" value: Breaking down the company culture and the importance of technical support for developers (21:26) Standing out in the interview process: Why managers must bring a strong "Point of View" on what a company should do differently (23:51). The Swiss Army Knife Manager: Why today's leaders must also be salespeople, PMs, and customer support engineers (24:46). The death of pure "people management": Re-centering on the IC craft and why managers must maintain AI competency (26:12). Adopting better IC skills: Building hobby projects for non-technical users to maintain empathy for the user experience (28:33) Management principles that remain true today (32:54) Combatting imposter syndrome: Building trust by being vulnerable and learning alongside your team (36:45). Interviewing trends: Assessing how candidates operate with and without AI tools (38:05). The return of "In Real Life" work: Why the Bay Area culture is refocusing on "sweating the details" in person (39:15) Rapid fire questions (41:33)   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Career progression is rarely a straight line. More often, it only makes sense in hindsight. Chris Chiu (VP of Engineering, Agentforce @ Salesforce) joins us to deconstruct how to navigate these non-linear career paths! We talk about identifying the mismatch in your current role, building a personal "career thesis," how to engineer a productive exploration phase and leverage your relationships / VC networks to understand the market. Plus, how to apply the "Running Framework" to ensure success in your next role and why technical depth is no longer optional for modern engineering leaders.   ABOUT CHRIS CHIU Chris Chiu is a VP of Engineering at Salesforce, where he helps build Agentforce, a platform for building enterprise AI agents. Prior to Salesforce, Chris was Head of Engineering at Moonhub, building AI recruiting agents. He has experience building and scaling product engineering teams that consistently deliver great products through rapid growth and change. Earlier in his career, he led engineering teams across companies ranging from early-stage startups to late-stage growth companies, including Figma, Flexport, and OpenGov.   This episode is brought to you by xMatters! xMatters automates the entire incident lifecycle with their purpose-built AI powered workflow, giving your team the context they need to stop disruptions before they start and minimize resolution times. Head over to xmatters.com to learn more!   SHOW NOTES: How Chris navigated the transition from Figma to Moonhub (3:47) Energy alignment: identifying the mismatch between your role and your drives (6:27) Sidesteps aren't inefficiencies: Why it's okay to not have a specific and/or linear career plan (8:26) Building a career “thesis” by balancing passions with industry shifts (11:18) The exploration phase: Strategies for a productive four-month “sabbatical” (14:07) Leveraging your network and venture capital relationships to understand the market (16:45) The utility of “status”: When the “logo” matters & when it's overrated (19:18) The "Running" Framework: Why you shouldn't increase career "speed" and "distance" simultaneously (21:33) How Chris applied these ideas to his move from Figma to Moonhub (24:33) Avoiding "career injury": Why stretching too thin hinders your flow state (27:07) Developing technical depth and leadership in the AI space (29:15) Learning through imitation: Finding and emulating leaders five years ahead of you (31:20) Chris's observations on the evolution of technical leadership (34:14) The shift from “peacetime” to “wartime” (37:58) The "Leaky Abstraction" litmus test: Why leaders must stay in the technical details (39:40) Now: Chris' transition to Agentforce and the future of AI at Salesforce (41:38) Rapid fire questions: Growth mindsets and holding identity loosely (43:59)   LINKS AND RESOURCES: 99% Invisible: The design and architecture podcast Sulman has followed for over a decade. The Invisible Cow Tunnels of Chicago: A specific episode of 99% Invisible mentioned by Patrick.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send a textWhat happens to engineering systems when fear shapes the conditions under which people work, or are allowed to work?In this episode of ENGINEERING CH∆NGE®, I examine how fear-driven decisions inside organizational systems can reshape their capacity to produce research, education, and societal outcomes, and not for the better.Drawing from lived experience and patterns emerging across institutions, this conversation explores how organizational systems lose capacity, expertise, and knowledge when silence replaces truth and optics replace accuracy. This episode invites listeners to reflect on the often invisible organizational inputs that shape engineering outcomes and what leaders must be willing to see if our systems are to serve society effectively.In this episode:How fear reshapes organizational decision-makingWhat happens when systems lose people, knowledge, and capacityWhy engineering outcomes depend on organizational conditionsA “System Check” reflection for leaders responsible for engineering and research outcomesIf this conversation resonates with you, follow ENGINEERING CH∆NGE® and leave a five-star review to help more engineers and leaders join the conversation.Visit the ENGINEERING CH∆NGE® podcast website to learn more and to request a free copy of my new brief, Engineering for Society.Support the showENGINEERING CHΔNGE® is a registered trademark held by Dr. Yvette E. Pearson for producing and providing podcasts.

In this episode, recorded live at the OpenAI studio, Sulman Choudhry (Head of ChatGPT @ OpenAI) pulls back the curtain on how they structure engineering teams! We talk about shifting from silos to fluid mission-driven teams, vertical vs. horizontal teams, maximizing cross-functional collaboration between research, engineering, product and design. Plus we cover “directly responsible individuals” for high accountability, managers as systems designers, scaling decision-making to prevent leadership from becoming bottlenecks, frameworks for mentoring junior engineers, why “problem framing” is the most critical skill, and how managers can stay close to problems and maintain technical intuition.   ABOUT SULMAN CHOUDHRY Sulman leads ChatGPT Engineering at OpenAI, driving the development and scaling of one of the world's most impactful AI products. He pushes the boundaries of innovation by turning cutting‑edge research into practical, accessible tools that transform how people interact with technology. Previously at Meta, Sulman founded and scaled Instagram Reels, IGTV, and Instagram Labs, and helped lead the early development of Instagram Stories. He also brought MetaAI to Instagram and Messenger, integrating generative AI into experiences used by billions. Earlier in his career, Sulman was on the founding team that built and launched UberEATS from the ground up, helping turn it into a global food delivery platform. With a track record of marrying technical vision, product strategy, and large‑scale execution, Sulman focuses on building products that meaningfully change how people live, work, and connect.   This episode is brought to you by xMatters! xMatters automates the entire incident lifecycle with their purpose-built AI powered workflow, giving your team the context they need to stop disruptions before they start and minimize resolution times. Head over to xmatters.com to learn more!   SHOW NOTES: The Shift to AI-Native Engineering: How AI is collapsing the "Inner Loop" and reshaping engineering team composition (2:48) Mission-Driven Teams: Moving from traditional functional silos to integrated, problem-centric units (4:45) Vertical vs. Horizontal Team Architecture: How OpenAI structures specialized horizontal teams (ex. Infrastructure, RTC/Voice) with product verticals (7:04) Fluid org charts & blurring functional roles: AI-Native teams require proactive mission alignment and coordination over rigid structure (8:48) The Lifecycle of Problem-Oriented Teams: What happens when a "strike team" solves the problem (10:02) Maximizing cross functional collaboration between engineering, research, product and design (11:52) The DRI Framework: Implementing the "Directly Responsible Individual" model for high-velocity accountability (13:32) Thriving in the "Chaos Factory": Addressing bottlenecks in highly dynamic, high-volume environments (16:02) Prioritization & "Letting 1,000 Flowers Bloom": How OpenAI decides which AI bets to double down on (19:13) Scaling Decision-Making: Preventing leadership from becoming the bottleneck as volume increases (21:19) Knowing when to call it quits on a bet and reallocate talent for maximum impact (23:29) The Manager as "Systems Designer": Shifting the EM role from people logistics to technical orchestration (24:49) The Barbell Talent Strategy: Optimizing for innovation by pairing "super seniors" with "super juniors" (28:10) Mentorship in the AI Age: How to coaching junior engineers when the "cost of code" is approaching zero (30:19) Technical Intuition for Leaders: Sulman's frameworks for staying "close to the metal" as a manager (33:17) Cultivating Judgment: Why "Problem Framing" is the most critical skill for the modern engineer (37:01) Rapid fire questions (38:59)   LINKS AND RESOURCES: 99% Invisible](https://99percentinvisible.org/): The design and architecture podcast Sulman has followed for over a decade. The Invisible Cow Tunnels of Chicago](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/cow-tunnels/): A specific episode of 99% Invisible mentioned by Patrick.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What does it take to build AI-powered products at speed - and lead the teams doing it? This episode has the answers.We sit down with Dominik Plsek, Senior Engineering Manager at Productboard, for an honest and energizing conversation about engineering leadership, the rise of AI-first product development, and what it really means to build something you believe in.Dominik has been with Productboard for over six years, joining fresh out of his master's degree after an instant connection with the team. Since then, he's grown from engineer to leader, and today he oversees multiple teams driving some of the company's most strategic work, including the newly launched Spark, Productboard's AI-first product management experience.In this episode, you'll hear:How Dominik leads with empathy and empowers teams to take real ownershipA behind-the-scenes look at building and launching SparkWhy he believes first-principles thinking will define the next generation of great engineersHow Productboard is approaching AI adoption across its entire engineering organizationWhat kind of engineers and managers Dominik is looking to hire right nowWhether you're an engineer curious about growth and AI, a leader looking for a fresh perspective on team management, or someone exploring what it's like to work at Productboard, this is an episode worth your time.

Kiren Sekar (CPO @ Samsara) joins us to deconstruct the "Innovation Engine" behind Samsara, and how this system drives real-world impact and ROI across their products. We explore Samsara's decade-long compound product strategy and the mechanics of accelerating feedback loops in an era where the primary bottlenecks shift from code generation to customer feedback and absorption of change. Kiren details how their data flywheel expands the aperture of what is possible to build and we dive into the system of customer-driven innovation: advisory boards, “spark sessions” to test hypotheses and gain unfiltered feedback. Plus we talk about the power of embedding engineers in frontline environments (from truckyards to construction sites) to cultivate “taste,” customer empathy and trigger non-linear ideas. ABOUT KIREN SEKARKiren Sekar is the Chief Product Officer at Samsara (NYSE: IOT), where he has helped lead the company from a hardware-hacking startup in a basement to a global leader in Connected Operations with over $1.5B in ARR. An early leader at Meraki (acquired by Cisco for $1.2B) and an Apple veteran with multiple patents, Kiren specializes in the rare intersection of hardware, massive-scale data, and AI. He is the architect of a platform that now processes trillions of data points for the industries that keep the world running—trucking, construction, and logistics. This episode is brought to you by Retool!What happens when your team can't keep up with internal tool requests? Teams start building their own, Shadow IT spreads across the org, and six months later you're untangling the mess…Retool gives teams a better way: governed, secure, and no cleanup required.Retool is the leading enterprise AppGen platform, powering how the world's most innovative companies build the tools that run their business. Over 10,000 organizations including Amazon, Stripe, Adobe, Brex, and Orangetheory Fitness use the platform to safely harness AI and their enterprise data to create governed, production-ready apps.Learn more at Retool.com/elc SHOW NOTES:Real-world ROI The Intersection of Bits and Atoms: How Samsara supported customers through a once-in-a-century snowstorm using real-time AI insights (3:59)The Practicality Filter: Why low-margin, high-utility businesses are the best "BS detectors" for product builders (9:25)Deconstructing the compound product strategy: 10 years of feedback loops, scaling empathy, and technical capabilities (10:53)Accelerating your innovation flywheel, customer and product feedback loops (14:39)The New Bottleneck: Why writing code is no longer the constraint, and how to optimize for customer absorption of change (19:58)The Data Flywheel: Leveraging trillions of proprietary data points to solve new problems and expand your innovation engine into new capabilities (23:36)Embedding engineers in customer problems: Why there is no substitute for engineers seeing the frontline environment firsthand (29:56)How customer empathy and "taste" amplify the benefits of AI coding agents (33:26)Building a system of customer-driven innovation: Utilizing Advisory Boards and "Spark Sessions" to turn 10,000+ customers into co-creators (37:40)Rapid fire questions (47:50)This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Founders often delay leadership coaching until a major crisis hits, leading to significant costs in productivity, team churn, and poor decisions. In this episode, James Birchler (Technical Advisor & Executive Leadership Coach) argues that early coaching is a game-changer for a startup's success. We explore the hidden costs of waiting and the benefits of intentionally installing leadership and communication systems before you scale. James shares specific self-awareness mechanisms, like advisory groups and feedback loops, to help founders design their day and create accountability. You'll also learn practical strategies like the "5-Minute Alignment Loop" for spotting communication breakdowns & for reinforcing clarity. Plus insights on how to "install your leadership OS" so it can scale with your company. ABOUT JAMES BIRCHLERJames Birchler is an executive leadership coach and technical advisor who specializes in helping engineering leaders and founders develop greater self-awareness and build high-performing teams. He combines deep technical expertise with practical leadership development, making him particularly valuable for technical leaders scaling their organizations.As both a founder and engineering leader, James has more than 20 years of experience leading teams at companies ranging from early-stage startups to Amazon, where his current role is Technical Advisor to the VP of Amazon Delivery Routing and Planning. Most recently, he founded NICER, a premium natural personal care company, and Actuate Partners, his executive coaching and technical advisory practice. He also held VP of Engineering roles at companies including Caffeine (backed by Greylock and Andreessen Horowitz), SmugMug (where his team acquired Flickr), and IMVU.At IMVU, James implemented the Lean Startup methodologies alongside Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and creator of the methodology, literally the first company to apply these principles. His team helped pioneer the DevOps movement by building infrastructure to ship code to production 50 times per day and coining the term "continuous deployment." This experience in systematic experimentation and continuous improvement now informs his coaching approach through frameworks like CAMS (Coaching, Advising, Mentoring, Supporting) and the Think-Do-Learn Loop.James completed his executive coaching certification at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Executive Coaching Institute. His coaching practice focuses on self-awareness, integrity, accountability, and fostering growth mindsets that support continuous learning and high performance. He writes the Continuous Growth newsletter and offers both individual executive coaching and peer learning circles for technical leaders.Through his advisory work with growth-stage startups in the US and Europe, James helps leaders navigate common scaling challenges including hiring and interviewing, implementing development methodologies, establishing operational cadences, and developing other leaders. His approach treats leadership development like product development—with systematic feedback loops, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.You can find James at jamesbirchler.com, LinkedIn, and Substack. This episode is brought to you by Retool!What happens when your team can't keep up with internal tool requests? Teams start building their own, Shadow IT spreads across the org, and six months later you're untangling the mess…Retool gives teams a better way: governed, secure, and no cleanup required.Retool is the leading enterprise AppGen platform, powering how the world's most innovative companies build the tools that run their business. Over 10,000 organizations including Amazon, Stripe, Adobe, Brex, and Orangetheory Fitness use the platform to safely harness AI and their enterprise data to create governed, production-ready apps.Learn more at Retool.com/elc SHOW NOTES:Why founders should seek coaching earlier rather than waiting for a crisis to occur (2:45)The high stakes of ignoring this critical advice & how this leads to communication & scaling problems (4:50)The importance of effective communication channels & leadership mechanisms before pressure increases (6:12)How investing a small amount in coaching early on can prevent hundreds of thousands of dollars in future costs (8:07)Frameworks for cultivating self-awareness / leadership blind spots (11:06)James's practice of "designing your day" around a desired identity, not just a list of tasks (12:30)Why designing your day is about intentionality (15:13)How this practice leads to better relationships & opportunities to reflect (17:44)Reflective listening & its impact on customer relationships (19:32)Strategies for improving self-awareness / uncovering blind spots (22:05)An example of how awareness can lead to better results  (26:03)Day-to-day rituals for improving self-awareness (28:14)Signals that your communication methods are effective & getting through (30:37)Reflect on & define the desired outcome you want to generate (33:26)The five-minute alignment loop for creating clarity & confirming ownership as a leader (35:21)Why creating clarity & finding alignment is key as a founder (37:02)How the same communication & leadership patterns recur as your org scales, from small startup to large enterprise (39:46)The increasing importance of human skills like emotional intelligence and reflective listening in an age of AI (42:03)Rapid fire questions (44:38)This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send us a textBob Hankins brings over 20 years of dedicated experience in the medical-device industry, spanning engineering leadership, product development, process improvement and strategic technical oversight. As Director of Engineering at TE Connectivity, he leads a global team of engineers and scientists focused on designing, developing and delivering innovative customer-centric medical device solutions—particularly complex machined, extruded and laser-cut components. In this role he ensures design for manufacturing and quality within ISO 13485-compliant systems, marrying deep technical understanding with regulatory-driven manufacturing discipline.Before his current role Bob led Research & Product Development Engineering at Nordson Medical and has held key leadership positions at several medical-device companies, including overseeing product development platforms, multi-site engineering operations, manufacturing automation and system launches. Throughout his career he has honed core competencies in manufacturing process improvement, continuous improvement (including Six Sigma/Lean methodologies), design for manufacturing/assembly, regulatory compliance (ISO 13485, ISO 14971, FDA), and product R&D for the health-care market.Bob's academic background includes a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine, and an Executive MBA from the Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University. This combination of technical and business education supports his ability to lead engineering organizations in bridging innovation with operational execution, customer development and quality.In this episode we'll dive into how Bob thinks about leading engineering teams in the regulated medical-device space, how he drives design and process improvements globally, how he balances innovation with manufacturing rigor, and what advice he has for engineers growing into leadership roles in healthcare technology. We'll also explore his views on what the next wave of medical-device manufacturing and design looks like—and how engineering leaders can foster a culture of excellence, empowerment and impact. LINKS:Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthankins/Guest website: https://www.te.com/en/home.html Aaron Moncur, hostThe Wave is  a place for engineers to actively learn, share ideas, and engage with people doing similar work. Learn more at thewave.engineer Subscribe to the show to get notified so you don't miss new episodes every Friday.The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us Watch the show on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@TeamPipelineus

In our latest ELC episode, we are addressing some of the biggest challenges facing engineers today: identifying your scaling thesis, putting that thesis into practice, and addressing implementation challenges. Jaikumar Ganesh, Head of Engineering @ Anyscale, shares insights from his experience working at top tech companies like Android and Uber, and how to apply those lessons within your own orgs. We also cover strategies for identifying what to build, using data effectively when it comes to understanding AI agents, and keeping your intent (and customer success) top of mind. Additionally, Jaikumar discusses his experience as a GM and why all orgs should adopt cross-functional skillsets as part of their company culture. ABOUT JAIKUMAR GANESHJaikumar Ganesh is an accomplished technology leader and the Head of Engineering at Anyscale. With a deep background in engineering and customer-facing roles, Jaikumar has a proven track record of building and scaling engineering organizations. He is passionate about pushing the boundaries of product and engineering innovation while ensuring customer needs are met, and is committed to building empowering organizations rooted in trust, respect, and growth. Jaikumar is excited about working with companies to harness the power of AI and distributed computing to achieve their goals. He previously co-started and co-led Uber's AI group—the central ML group at Uber—and was also on the early team at Android @ Google. This episode is brought to you by Retool!What happens when your team can't keep up with internal tool requests? Teams start building their own, Shadow IT spreads across the org, and six months later you're untangling the mess…Retool gives teams a better way: governed, secure, and no cleanup required.Retool is the leading enterprise AppGen platform, powering how the world's most innovative companies build the tools that run their business. Over 10,000 organizations including Amazon, Stripe, Adobe, Brex, and Orangetheory Fitness use the platform to safely harness AI and their enterprise data to create governed, production-ready apps.Learn more at Retool.com/elc SHOW NOTES:Reflecting on scaling patterns across the 2000s, 2010s, and the AI era (03:27)Why "copy-pasting" scaling strategies from other companies leads to failure (5:56)How to define a scaling thesis by mapping revenue projections to infrastructure strategy (7:52)Infrastructure shifts: From Android's OS abstractions to Uber's on-prem data centers (9:56)The "Build vs. Buy" dilemma in the age of AI agents and third-party solutions (12:09)Why "Knowing What to Build" is the new long pole in engineering productivity (20:17)Developing "Product Thinking" within engineering and infrastructure teams (23:10)The emergence of Context Graphs and "Source of Truth" platforms for AI agents (24:46)How to avoid data & context graphs becoming bottlenecks (27:05)Lessons from GM leadership: Bridging the gap between engineering, product, and sales (29:06)The "6-20" Initiative: Uniting cross-functional teams around specific customer wins (32:45)Training engineers to empathize with customer pain and translate technical wins into the language of sales (33:48)Utilizing cross-departmental daily standups and leaderboards to drive aggressive "block and tackle" execution (36:18)Tracing execution failures back to early decision-making and judgment gaps (38:42)Rapid fire questions (45:28) This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Edward H. Muñoz rose from humble beginnings as a first-generation Mexican American in a South Texas border town to build a 33-year career at Celanese, where he played a key role in transforming the company into a global leader in engineering materials. After earning a chemistry degree from the University of Texas at Austin, he joined Celanese during its pivot from fibers to high-value engineering resins and helped establish its polyacetal product as a serious competitor to industry giants like DuPont and GE. His journey included navigating corporate takeovers, leading multinational teams, confronting cultural bias, and accepting personal sacrifices, particularly the strain his ambition placed on family life. A near-fatal car accident that killed a close friend became a defining turning point, propelling him into international leadership roles and reshaping both his career trajectory and personal life. In this episode of Marketer of the Day, Edward Muñoz reflects on his legacy through his memoir Challenges, Triumphs, and Heroes: Memoirs of My Celanese Odyssey, which honors the people behind corporate success while capturing the human cost of leadership. He discusses his work in Germany and Mexico, his commitment to inclusive leadership, and the lessons learned from balancing ambition, culture, and responsibility. Now living with Parkinson's disease, he remains active through photography, travel, and leadership within the arts community, helping an organization not only survive the pandemic but grow significantly. Key takeaways include the importance of resilience, values-driven leadership, preserving personal history, and leaving something meaningful behind for future generations. Quotes: “The hardest challenge was balancing ambition with family. You gain a career, but you pay a price, and you have to decide what you are willing to give up.” “I am an American. That moment taught me how perception works and how easily people define others before they listen.” “You are not going to be around forever, so you have to leave something behind that others can learn from.” “When I think I might get fired, I remember this: I was looking for a job when I got here.” Resources: Connect with Edward H. Muñoz on LinkedIn Discover Edward H. Muñoz's journey from first-generation roots to global leadership. Get Challenges, Triumphs, and Heroes: Memoirs of My Celanese Odyssey on Amazon.