Tech Lead Journal

What if optimizing for AI output is actually slowing your company down? When code becomes nearly free to produce, the organizations still measuring productivity by output are solving the wrong problem. In this episode, Mik Kersten, author of “Project to Product” and the forthcoming “Output to Outcome,” shares why the real challenge of the AI era isn’t generating more code — it’s building organizat...

Why do 70% of change efforts fail — even when leadership is fully committed? The answer isn’t strategy or resources; it’s the hidden stories people unknowingly carry that silently block every initiative. In this episode, Ronica Roth, author of “Practice Makes Culture” and co-founder of The Welcome Elephant, shares a practical framework for creating lasting organizational change. Drawing on 25 year...

What if your AI coding agent is quietly cheating on your tests — and how do you stop it? Julien Verlaguet, who built the type system Meta used to migrate tens of millions of PHP lines, is now building Skipper: a closed-loop coding agent designed to make AI-generated code verifiably correct, without human intervention. In this episode, Julien Verlaguet, creator of the Hack programming language at M...

Why do companies with the best intentions end up betraying their customers, employees, and mission? Eric Ries calls it “financial gravity” — an invisible force that pulls even the most principled companies toward corruption, and understanding it is the first step to resisting it. In this episode, Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, shares why building a great...

What if faster coding is actually slowing your software delivery down? Most teams are pouring AI into the coding phase, but the real bottleneck is everywhere else. In this episode, Andrew Haschka, Field CTO at GitLab for Asia Pacific and Japan, explains why most AI strategies in software engineering are failing and what it takes to fix them. He introduces the AI paradox: teams invest heavily in AI...

(07:22) Brought to you by Mailtrap Mailtrap is a modern email delivery for developers with native SDKs support along with security compliant API & SMTP. Plus, you get 4,000 emails a month completely on their free tier! It also provides 24/7 support where you actually talk to real people, not an AI chatbot. Try Mailtrap for free at  ⁠mailtrap.io⁠ . What does code review mean when AI writes most...

(05:00) Brought to you by Mailtrap Mailtrap is a modern email delivery for developers with native SDKs support along with security compliant API & SMTP. Plus, you get 4,000 emails a month completely on their free tier! It also provides 24/7 support where you actually talk to real people, not an AI chatbot. Try Mailtrap for free at  mailtrap.io . What happens when AI ships code faster than your...

What if vibe coding is the worst thing you could do with AI agents? The developers seeing the biggest gains aren’t prompting harder. They’re planning smarter, spec-first, and treating AI as a facilitator rather than a code generation engine. In this episode, Brian Madison, creator of the BMad Method, shares how a year of late-night AI experiments led him to a structured, Agile-inspired approach to...

Why do 80-95% of AI initiatives fail — and why is your organization’s structure to blame? Most companies are treating AI like a software upgrade, when it actually demands a complete rewiring of how work gets done. In this episode, Melissa Reeve, author of Hyperadaptive and organizational change expert, shares a practical model for transforming legacy enterprises into AI-native organizations built...

What does it take to build a world-class engineering culture when you start with five engineers on minimum wage? Tommy Sullivan did exactly that at Vidio — and the team’s average tenure of seven years tells you everything about whether it worked. In this episode, Tommy Sullivan, CTO of Vidio (Indonesia’s largest streaming platform) shares how he built an engineering culture from almost nothing, gr...

Why do so many talented senior engineers struggle the moment they step into a tech lead role? Most of them are promoted based on their coding ability, but that same strength becomes a liability the moment they start leading a team. In this episode, Anemari Fiser, tech lead coach and author of “Leveling Up as a Tech Lead”, shares the three mindset shifts that define the transition from senior engin...

In a world where AI can build your MVP overnight, what actually gives you a lasting competitive edge? Andrew Stevens argues it’s not the software — it’s the data, the trust, and the systems you build around them. In this episode, Andrew Stevens, CTO of Sakura Sky and a technology leader with 30+ years of experience building, scaling, and selling companies, shares hard-won lessons from his journey...

With AI generating code faster than ever, coding alone is no longer enough. The engineers who will stand out aren’t the ones who write the most code, but the ones who know what to build and why. In this episode, Drew Hoskins, author of “The Product-Minded Engineer”, shares how engineers can develop the product thinking skills that will define their careers in the AI era. Drew draws on his experien...

What if the MCP server you installed last week is silently leaking your emails to a stranger? The AI tools boosting your productivity could already be your biggest security liability. MCP (Model Context Protocol) has quickly become the standard for connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources. But as adoption accelerates, so do the risks – from malicious servers harvesting your credenti...

Think you’re just “not a people person”? Most tech leaders quietly believe this about themselves, and it’s exactly what’s holding them back. In this episode, Martijn Versteeg, founder of peer leadership community Group Effort and former CPTO with a background in organizational psychology, makes the case that it’s not: human behavior follows predictable patterns you can understand and work with, ju...

Is your platform engineering initiative struggling to deliver results? The problem might not be your tools or technology at all. In this episode, Sam Barlien, Community Organizer at Platform Engineering (the world’s largest platform engineering community), shares insights from speaking with nearly 400 engineering leaders last year about why their platform initiatives succeed or fail. The biggest r...

(05:13) Brought to you by Sweep AI Sweep is the fastest coding assistant for JetBrains. It lets you write code 10x faster. Finally, AI that works in JetBrains. Download for free at  ⁠sweep.dev⁠ . What if Southeast Asia had its own ChatGPT that cost 20x less? Bruce Yang built Agnes AI to solve what global companies ignore: accessible AI for emerging markets. In this episode, Bruce Yang, CEO and fou...

(05:22) Brought to you by Cyberhaven AI is exfiltrating your data in fragments. Not one big breach — a prompt here, a screenshot there, a quiet export into a shadow AI tool. Every week, AI makes your team faster and your data harder to see. Files are moved to new SaaS apps, models are trained on sensitive inputs, and legacy DLP is blind to the context that matters most. On February 3rd at 11 am Pa...

(06:23) Brought to you by Sweep AI Sweep is the fastest coding assistant for JetBrains. It lets you write code 10x faster. Finally, AI that works in JetBrains. Download for free at  sweep.dev . Is the era of writing code by hand coming to an end? Gene Kim explains how vibe coding solved problems he abandoned for 13 years and why the best days of coding might be ahead of us. In this episode, Gene K...

Why are tech companies really laying off developers? The uncomfortable truth has nothing to do with AI efficiency and everything to do with running out of ideas. In this episode, Stephan Schmidt, CTO coach and author of “The Amazing CTO’s Missing Manual,” shares a perspective on AI adoption that most tech leaders aren’t talking about. Developer layoffs aren’t about AI replacing jobs; they reveal a...

(04:11) Brought to you by Jellyfish AI tools alone won’t transform your engineering org. Jellyfish provides insights into AI tool adoption, cost, and delivery impact – so you can make better investment decisions and build teams that use AI effectively. See for yourself at  jellyfish.co/platform/ai-impact . Are you managing your team the same way you did five years ago? With AI agents now part of t...

(04:00) Brought to you by Unleash Unleash is a private, flexible, and scalable feature flag system that lets teams decouple deployments from releases. It reduces the risk of shipping new features and gives organizations real-time control over what reaches production. And as AI accelerates development, Unleash helps engineering teams move fast and stay stable with safe rollouts and instant kill swi...

(06:03) Brought to you by Unleash Unleash is a private, flexible, and scalable feature flag system that lets teams decouple deployments from releases. It reduces the risk of shipping new features and gives organizations real-time control over what reaches production. And as AI accelerates development, Unleash helps engineering teams move fast and stay stable with safe rollouts and instant kill swi...

(06:06) Brought to you by Jellyfish AI tools alone won’t transform your engineering org. Jellyfish provides insights into AI tool adoption, cost, and delivery impact – so you can make better investment decisions and build teams that use AI effectively. See for yourself at  jellyfish.co/platform/ai-impact . Why do organizations constantly complain about having too much technical debt? Because they’...

Why does an AI that brilliantly generates code suddenly fail at basic math? The answer explains why your LLM will fail when you least expect it. In this episode, Emmanuel Maggiori, author of “Smart Until It’s Dumb” and “The AI Pocket Book,” cuts through the AI hype to reveal what LLMs actually do and, more importantly, what they can’t. Drawing from his experience building AI systems and witnessing...