Beyond The Build

Send us Fan Mail This week on Last Week in Tech episode, we discussed: Anthropic just re-released a model the US government told them to pull. OpenAI dropped GPT 5 but only to 20 companies. In this episode, Uma and Ope break down what these staggered launches reveal about government influence over Claude AI releases, and why both hosts believe these restrictions could quietly hand the AI lead to C...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 This week on Last Week in Tech: a $100M fintech disaster that tricked millions of Americans, Polymarket's fake gambling website exposed by college influencers, and why China's new open-weight AI model is spooking Silicon Valley. Plus, your smart TV might be selling your IP address without you kn...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Connect with Ope - https://www.linkedin.com/in/osunkoyaope/ Articles AI Agent Hijack: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/06/18/autojack-single-page-rce-host-running-ai-agent/ Skills Over MCP: https://aaif.io/blog/skills-over-mcp/ Slow down and Sit With It: https://yaoyue.org/blog/2026-slow...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Connect with Ope - https://www.linkedin.com/in/osunkoyaope/ Connect with Uma: Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/umacodes) Tiktok: (https://www.tiktok.com/@umacodes) Twitter: (https://twitter.com/umacodes) LinkedIn: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/umaabu/) Follow us on Social Media Instagram: (https://www...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Beyond The Basics With Claude Code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuY2ChJIx48 Google Is Paying SpaceX To Use Its GPU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417490 Opus 4.8:  https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-8 AWS Agentic Football Worldcup: https://aws-experience.com/emea/smb/e/45d3b/aws-age...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Articles Learn Harness Engineering https://walkinglabs.github.io/learn-harness-engineering/en/  Meta Engineering Draft: https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/inside-metas-ai-draft-zuckerberg-134000308.html Forward-Deployed Engineer https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/04/anthropic-and-openai-are...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Articles AWS Overheating: https://www.itpro.com/infrastructure/aws-outage-explained-may-2026-data-center-overheating OpenAI buying tools: https://medium.com/@krupeshraut/openai-and-anthropic-are-buying-the-tools-every-developer-uses-heres-why-you-should-care-e52006bc4707 Software Engineering May No Longer...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Connect with Ope - https://www.linkedin.com/in/osunkoyaope/ Connect with Uma: Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/umacodes) Tiktok: (https://www.tiktok.com/@umacodes) Twitter: (https://twitter.com/umacodes) LinkedIn: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/umaabu/) Follow us on Social Media Instagram: (https://www...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we break down one of the wildest stories in tech right now — an AI agent wiping out an entire production database in seconds — and what that says about the systems we’re building. But that’s just the beginning. We also dive into the bigger shift happening across the industry: the decline of junior developer roles, the rise of AI-assisted engineering, and why the w...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Last week in tech, around 20,000 layoffs landed in seven days. Meta announced 8,000 cuts and froze another 6,000 open roles, reorganizing survivors into a new Applied AI Engineering division. Microsoft ran its first voluntary buyout in 51 years, using a Rule of 70 to target longer tenured staff. And Sam A...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 AI coding tools are everywhere right now. They’re helping engineers move faster, ship more code, and build things that would’ve taken days in a fraction of the time. But there’s a catch. Recent studies show that around 40 to 46 percent of AI-generated code contains security vulnerabilities. At the same ti...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Most engineers think onboarding is about learning the codebase. It’s not. In this episode of Beyond the Build , we break down what onboarding actually is and why so many smart engineers struggle in their first 90 days, even when they’re technically strong. We talk about the hidden layer no one teaches you...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 In this episode of Beyond the Build , we break down one of the most uncomfortable but important parts of being a software engineer: receiving feedback. We get into why feedback hits so hard, especially for high performers, and walk through what it actually looks like to receive it well. Not just smile and...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 The game has changed, but not in the way most people think. AI has made it easier to build things fast, but it hasn't made the hard parts any easier. In this episode, Uma and Ope break down the new meta for software engineers: what gatekeeping used to look like and why it no longer scales, why a &quo...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Join the CodeRoom: https://thecoderoom.carrd.co/ You asked, and we came prepared. In this special listener Q&A episode, we answer your most pressing questions about navigating the tech industry. From junior developers worried about being replaced by AI, to self-taught engineers fighting for recognitio...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 AI has made writing code faster than ever. But speed isn’t the differentiator anymore. In this episode of Beyond the Build, we talk about engineering taste, what it actually means, why it matters more in an AI-driven world, and how to develop it intentionally. We explore why taste matters more than ever w...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 In this episode of Beyond the Build , we sit down with a seasoned recruiter to unpack what actually happens behind the scenes of tech hiring. We break down why hiring is really about risk management under uncertainty, why strong candidates still get rejected, and how recruiters and hiring managers evaluat...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Personal branding isn’t about being an influencer or posting for clout. It’s about controlling how you’re perceived when you’re not in the room. In this episode of *Beyond the Build*, we break down why software engineers already have a brand whether they like it or not, how internal and public branding sh...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Writing code is rarely the hardest part of software engineering. As engineers grow, the real challenge shifts to something far less talked about: coordinating people, aligning goals, sharing context, and synchronizing work across teams. In this episode of Beyond the Build, we break down why so many engine...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Should you stay or should you leave? In this episode of Beyond the Build, we tackle one of the hardest questions in your career: when should you actually leave your team or company? Most engineers don't think about this until they're already frustrated, burnt out, or realizing they've been...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Most engineers spend years perfecting their coding skills but completely ignore the one skill that actually determines who gets promoted, who gets their ideas shipped, and who leads projects: **writing**. In this episode, we break down why documentation isn't just "nice to have" - it's...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Think your manager is just there to assign you tasks? Think again. In this episode of Beyond the Build, we dig into one of the most overlooked parts of being a software engineer: what you should actually expect from your manager. A lot of engineers think management is just about task updates, but your man...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 Everyone says you should “find joy” or “do what you love” but is that realistic advice, or just another modern work myth? In this episode of Beyond the Build, We unpack the tension between fulfillment and functionality at work. Should you expect your job to make you happy, or is that setting yourself up f...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 In this episode, we unpack the realities of working from home versus working in the office. We share what’s lost when you’re remote, like casual hallway conversations and easy collaboration and how that affects connection and visibility at work. We also explore the upsides of remote life: fewer distractio...

Send us Fan Mail Ask us a question or suggest an Episode: https://forms.gle/8tEg2CKTNNWteSgt9 When your teammate is struggling, it's easy to assume they're not trying hard enough. But what if the problem is something else entirely? In this episode of Beyond The Build, we dive deep into one of the most uncomfortable topics in software engineering: how to recognize when a colleague is stru...