Unfiltered insights on microservices myths, cloud cost reality, and pragmatic technical leadership

Two veteran CTOs tear down today's tech hype with brutal honesty and hard-won experience. Raz Schweiger-Shuty shares his controversial approach to technical leadership at auxmoney, where he stopped a microservices rewrite and focused on business outcomes over engineering trends.

From his early days as a QA engineer to running 80-person engineering organizations, Raz demonstrates why sometimes the best technical decision is the boring one that actually works. This conversation offers a masterclass in pragmatic technical leadership for an age obsessed with the latest frameworks and architectures.

Key insights for technical leaders:
• 🏗️ Domain-driven design as prerequisite for any architectural decision
• 💰 FinOps strategies that connect engineering decisions to business metrics
• 🔄 Modular monolith patterns for teams of 40+ engineers
• 📊 Why velocity metrics are vanity and DORA metrics matter
• 🚫 Avoiding Kubernetes complexity when elasticity isn't needed
• 👥 Conway's Law applied to value stream organization
• 🔧 Platform engineering pitfalls and centralization nightmares

TIMESTAMPS:
[00:01:00 ] Show premise: Two CTO Dinosaurs vs. Today's Tech Hype
[00:03:56 ] Raz's unconventional path: QA to CTO via pragmatic learning
[00:08:31 ] Junior vs senior engineers in the AI era
[00:11:01 ] auxmoney: 17 years without a CTO, then Raz arrives
[00:13:45 ] Stopping the microservices migration: building trust through disagreement
[00:15:08 ] Language choices: PHP works, Rust creates hiring problems
[00:19:35 ] Modular monolith strategy using domain-driven design
[00:21:56 ] Value stream teams and Conway's Law alignment
[00:22:26 ] Kubernetes reality check: elasticity vs complexity overhead
[00:29:53 ] FinOps deep dive: €120k to €85k AWS cost reduction
[00:32:13 ] Cost-per-transaction metrics for engineering accountability
[00:35:00 ] Platform engineering centralization dangers
[00:40:22 ] Velocity metrics are broken: focus on DORA instead
[00:43:54 ] Meantime to recovery as team health indicator
[00:48:34 ] Bottom-up AI adoption: Cursor rollout strategy
[00:54:16 ] Fintech security: ISO 27001 and AI supply chain risks
[00:56:59 ] Leadership lessons: building trust through authentic communication