Refactoring Podcast

Today's guest is Charity Majors, CTO at Honeycomb and one of my absolute favorite writers. I believe I have recommended more articles from her blog than any other author on the newsletter. Today we talked about observability, testing in production, continuous delivery, developer experience and much more. Here is what we talked about: (00:49) Introduction (01:57) What is observability (07:00) Observability in microservices (12:51) From monitoring to observing (16:20) Start observing now (19:36) How to use observability (26:11) Observability costs (31:23) Testing in production (34:09) Continuous delivery (38:24) The greatest productivity offenders (43:04) Caring about the business (46:54) Generative tools add complexity (49:15) Junior engineers leverage — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠

Today's guest is Laura Tacho, CTO at DX, engineering leadership coach, and speaker. At DX, she works with hundreds of companies on improving their developer experience and engineering productivity. Here is what we talked about: (02:20) Introduction (03:36) Why measure engineering productivity (05:58) Finding the proper framework (13:33) Value metrics to find issues (15:00) Identify and ease the pressure (18:12) Reaching the proper execution (21:16) Measuring in different environments (25:25) The DevEx framework (27:58) Empowering DevEx in a business (31:56) Patterns for DevEx integration (41:03) Responsibilities ownership (47:48) The DevEx offenders — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠

Today's guest is Daniel Vassallo, the creator of the Small Bets community, which counts more than 5 ,000 members and includes engineers, entrepreneurs, and creators of all kinds. Daniel is also a former software engineer at AWS, the author of The Good Parts of AWS and created a successful Twitter course. With Daniel, we will talk about his unconventional journey in tech, the Small Bets philosophy, and advice for engineers about careers, site projects, technology and skills. Here is what we talked about: (01:11) Introduction & background (05:21) Small Bets' genesis & philosophy (14:36) Understanding the market (19:36) Taking care of the downsides (24:43) Improving your lifestyle first (29:05) The dangers of labelling yourself (32:10) Allocating your time (37:13) Self-managing your own work (45:34) Transitioning to a self-employed lifestyle (52:21) The selection criteria for your ideas — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠

Today's guest is Thiago Ghisi, Director of Engineering at Nubank. Thiago has had an incredible tech career. Before Nubank, he worked at Apple, Amex and ThoughtWorks. He is also a deep thinker, hosts a podcast and constantly shares great advice on X and LinkedIn. During our chat with Thiago, we talked about what makes managers successful, career expectations and frameworks and how to build a great tech career in 2024. Here is what we talked about: (01:13) Introduction (03:11) What makes people in tech productive (07:57) Beyond the feedback loop (11:24) Becoming a technical manager (18:45) How to be successful as Staff+ Engineer (26:47) From expert to achiever to strategist (34:46) Know your context but don't attach to it (46:00) The Four Ps (56:43) Q&A — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠

Andrew Weaver is co-founder and CEO of CTO Academy, an educational product that works with thousands of CTO today. Andrew has over 25+ years of executive-level experience with companies of various size, including enterprises, SME and early-stage companies across multiple sectors. With Andrew, we discussed gaining the proper skillset to be a good CTO, the imbalances in the tech space, and how to keep up with the current technologies. Here is what we talked about: (00:00) Introduction (03:02) What is CTO Academy and how it works (07:53) What makes a good CTO (14:01) The CTO mindset (20:06) Being a CTO in a remote environment (23:20) Unleashing the "quiet genius" (28:11) How AI is changing tech (36:58) Education & micro-learning (45:11) Q&A — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠

Wes Kao is a marketing executive, entrepreneur, and advisor who writes an amazing newsletter for high-performers in tech. She is co-founder of Maven, an edtech company that raised $25M from First Round and Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, she co-founded the altMBA with bestselling author Seth Godin. Here is what we talked about: (00:00) Introduction (03:08) Managing up (10:13) Bridging the gap between managers and reports (13:33) The “Bad Things / Good Things” framework (19:14) Good communication in the remote era (24:17) The transition to remote work at Maven (29:28) Sync vs async communication (33:41) Asynchronous videos (38:39) Transitioning to a Manager (46:57) Psychological safety (53:03) Over-communicating is communicating (58:59) Wes’ approach to reading — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠⁠Apple⁠

Maria Gutierrez is the VP of Engineering at Personio, and ex VP of Engineering and Operations at Twitter. With Maria we talked about how to build healthy and impactful engineering orgs as they scale. We touched on everything from processes to remote work, development cycle, hiring, structuring teams and more. (00:00) Introduction (02:12) Maria's career journey (05:18) How hyper-growth breaks engineering teams, and how to prevent it (09:32) How to balance speed and quality (13:40) What a high performing team looks like (15:46) How to scale without adding friction (19:22) Personio's engineering team and growth (21:02) Remote work: impact, relationships, and challenges (32:54) How remote work impacts different roles (38:09) Transition from engineer to manager (45:08) How to use engineering productivity metrics (51:05) The use of AI in Maria's teams (54:50) The evolution of engineering managers (58:11) Career advice for engineers — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠Apple⁠

Kathryn Koehler is the Director of Productivity Engineering at Netflix. Her teams focus on the development environment and associated experiences, which enable and empower developers at Netflix to bootstrap, code, build, test, debug, and maintain software more effectively and efficiently. Productivity is an ever-controversial topic in engineering, and with Kathryn we dived right into it! Here is what we talked about: (00:00) Introduction (03:54) Netflix Culture (10:37) Developer Productivity (22:54) Platform Teams (28:57) Meetings, Processes & Planning (41:26) Productivity Metrics (52:44) Q&A: AI, metrics, remote — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠Apple⁠

Farhan Thawar is VP of Engineering at Shopify, angel investor, and entrepreneur. Shopify is a public company with thousands of employees, and one of the very few companies of its scale to be remote-first. While other big tech quietly issued RTOs, Shopify doubled down on processes and culture that allowed it to stay remote, or, in their own words: digital-first. So, today, Shopify has ports instead of offices, does VR meetings, has a unique collaboration culture, and completely embraced AI for productivity. Here is everything we covered in the chat: (00:00) Introduction (05:49) Balancing Remote & IRL (09:20) Remote Communication (15:15) Remote vs IRL culture (21:30) Using VR for meetings and work (26:53) Pair Programming (39:57) The role of managers (46:20) Be an AI Centaur (51:23) Engineering Productivity Metrics (58:33) Q&A — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠Apple⁠ — For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email luca@refactoring.club

Today’s guest is Kent Beck, original signer of the Agile manifesto, creator of Extreme Programming, and all-round programming legend. With Kent we had the unique opportunity to talk about the big picture. I inquired him about the state of the software engineering craft today, discussing things like: (00:00) Introduction (02:27) Agile vs Power Structures (08:37) The Return of Waterfall (12:33) Extreme Programming & TDD (23:29) Feedback Loops (33:46) Code Reviews & Stacked diffs (43:06) AI for Writing and Engineering — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠ 📺 ⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠ 📱 ⁠⁠Apple⁠

Disheng Qiu is VP of Engineering at Translated, one of the largest translation companies in the world, powering localization for the likes of Airbnb, Uber, Skyscanner, and more. Translated has been working on proprietary AI models and tools for 20+ years. It has an internal research team and develops tools that power the work of tens of thousands of professionals. With Disheng we explored what it means to be an AI-first company. We talked about many things, including: (00:00) Introduction (03:24) What does Translated do? (12:40) Challenges and costs of fine-tuning AI models (30:36) Bringing AI research into products (43:30) The role of AI in enhancing productivity (57:12) The future of AI and human collaboration — You can also find this at: 📬 ⁠Newsletter⁠ 📺 ⁠Youtube⁠ 📱 ⁠Apple⁠

Aadil Maan is Lead Engineering Program Manager at Humane and a big tech veteran, having worked at the likes of Google, Apple, and Blackberry. Today’s theme is The World Builder Framework — Aadil's own approach to problem solving and solutioning processes, frameworks and workflows for product and engineering teams. Here are a few things we discussed in our chat: What do TPMs do? 🗺️ The World Builder Framework 🌎 Startups vs Big Tech 🏢 Hardware vs Software 🤖 Joining a new team 🎽 — This episode is brought to you by LinearB, the software engineering intelligence platform enabling engineering leaders improve their team’s operational efficiency, and align R&D investments to business goals. — Here are the key chapters from the interview: (00:00) Introduction (04:30) What is Technical Program Management (09:21) The World Builder Framework (25:44) The Anti-Framework Approach (31:49) Mixing Frameworks for Bespoke Solutions (40:33) Startup vs Big Tech (50:35) Hardware vs Software (01:00:30) The Power of Conversations — You can also find this at: 📬 Newsletter 📺 Youtube 📱 Apple — For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email luca@refactoring.club

Lena Reinhardt has dedicated her career to helping technology leaders build successful engineering organizations. Her background includes roles such as VP of Engineering at CircleCI and TravisCI, along with being a co founder and CEO of a SaaS startup. She now works as a leadership coach, management trainer, and organizational developer. Here are a few things we discussed in our chat: Challenges in the tech industry 📉 Creating a healthy work environment 🏡 How to take care of yourself ❤️ — This episode is brought to you by Swarmia, the engineering effectiveness platform for modern software organizations: https://swarmia.com — Here are the key chapters from the interview: (00:00) Introduction (03:18) The Landscape of the Tech Industry (06:25) The Role of Venture Capital (13:14) Generational Shifts (19:40) Leading in Times of Uncertainty (22:57) Self-Care for Leaders (35:18) Understanding Your Role and Its Impact (41:18) Recognizing Signs of Burnout (44:37) Investing in a Healthy Work Environment (52:32) The Importance of Delegation and System Building (01:02:55) Wrapping Up and Final Thoughts — For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email luca@refactoring.club

Weekly interviews with world-class engineering leaders, available for free to everyone, in video and audio. 🗓️ New episodes drop every Friday. 📬 Subscribe to the newsletter at refactoring.fm to receive the episodes via email. 📺 Check out the full videos on the Youtube channel