Business and Philosophy

The ability to create software is a superpower. But software education is not evenly distributed. Ryan Carson started Treehouse to provide a high quality education system for anyone to learn how to build software. On a previous episode, Ryan and I discussed the field of programming education. Ryan returns to the show for a conversation The post Treehouse: Business and Education with Ryan Carson ap...

Indie Hackers is a platform for independent software businesses to discuss strategy and find inspiration. Courtland Allen founded Indie Hackers with the goal of sharing the stories of these businesses, and the company has become a thriving community of entrepreneurs, engineers, and creators. Business is a creative medium. The definition of a successful business is The post Indie Hackers (3 Years L...

Scott Belsky founded Behance in 2006. Behance is a social platform where designers and creators share their work. Scott was motivated to start Behance due to his desire to combine his love for creativity with his desire to create a business. After 6 years of work, Behance was acquired by Adobe for more than $150 The post The Messy Middle with Scott Belsky appeared first on Software Engineering Dai...

Investors often use the term “moat” to describe the durable competitive advantage of a company. When an investor puts money into a company, they are making that investment based on a valuation. That valuation is subjective–it is how much the investor thinks the company is worth. A valuation is determined by the present value of The post Software Moats with Astasia Myers appeared first on Sof...

Software engineering is a new field. There are theories about how we should be building our systems, but these theories might change over time. The same is true for engineering management.  There are many successful examples of companies scaling with the management hierarchies pioneered by Microsoft and Google, but since everyone knows that those techniques The post Stripe Infrastructure Managemen...

Host: Charles Max Wood of JavaScript Jabber Joined by Special Guest: Jeffrey Meyerson Jeffrey Meyerson, founder of FindCollabs and host at Software Engineering Daily joins Charles Max Wood for a discussion about latest trends in the developer world, ways of monetizing podcasts, and finding ads for podcasts. Jeffrey shares how he started to host podcasts and how he became The post JavaScript Jabber...

Ilya Sukhar founded Parse in 2011 to make cloud services for mobile developers. Parse was a newer kind of cloud provider called “backend-as-a-service”, built to simplify the complexities of Amazon Web Services and the complexities of the mobile ecosystem.  During this time, Facebook was in the middle of its shift toward becoming a mobile application The post Facebook Parse Acquisition (Part 2) wit...

Parse was a backend-as-a-service company that started in 2011 with the initial focus of making the cloud easier to use for mobile developers. Parse had several novel engineering challenges. In 2011, it was not easy to build on top of AWS, nor was it easy to build within the young mobile ecosystem. Charity Majors was The post Facebook Parse Acquisition (Part 1) with Charity Majors appeared first on...

Kent Beck is a legendary figure in the world of software engineering.  Kent was an early advocate of Test-Driven Development (TDD), and popularized the idea of writing unit tests before writing code that would satisfy those unit tests. A unit test isolates and tests a small piece of functionality within a large piece of software. The post Facebook Engineering Process with Kent Beck appeared first...

When Chuck Rossi joined Facebook in 2008, he was one of the most experienced release engineers at the company. As he began to explore the engineering practices of the organization, he was surprised, confused, and impressed by the release engineering system that he encountered. Release engineering is the process by which software is released to The post Facebook Release Engineering with Chuck Rossi...

When a new employee joins a software company, it is often unclear where that employee should begin. Do they have a mentor? What are they working on? What are the expectations for how fast that employee should be contributing? The early period of employment is often referred to as “onboarding.” During the onboarding period, an The post Technical Onboarding with Kristen Gallagher appeared first on S...

Insurance is an old business. Individuals and businesses have been buying insurance policies for decades. These insurance policies can cost hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars per year.   Software is remaking the insurance industry. One way new software can improve the insurance industry is through better brokerage technology. Insurance involves carriers and brokers, The post Insu...

Software engineers often work as a contractor for some duration of their career. A contractor earns a fixed hourly salary for a defined period of weeks, months, or years. Contract work can be more flexible than full-time work, and often pays more than full-time software engineering, because contract jobs can end at any time, and The post Moonlight: Software Contracting Platform with Emma Lawler an...

The PlayStation is a line of game consoles created by Sony. PlayStation devices include the PS2, PS3, PS4, and the PSP mobile system. Tony Godar worked as an engineer in the PlayStation ecosystem for 15 years, and he joins the show to give a retrospective on his time in the console industry. Developing hardware and The post PlayStation Engineering with Tony Godar appeared first on Software Enginee...

Large software companies have become a target for criticism. Google, Facebook, Amazon and other prominent technology giants find themselves under a kind of scrutiny that is reminiscent of banks in 2008 and oil companies in the early 1900s. Across the planet, there is a growing sentiment that “big tech” has too much power, and that The post Big Business with Tyler Cowen appeared first on Software E...

In this episode Will Larson, author of An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management, speaks with Uma Chingunde of Stripe and Jeff Meyerson of Software Engineering Daily about engineering management. Will was also featured on SE Daily recently. An Elegant Puzzle is an excellent resource on management techniques and strategies for scaling software organizations. Will’s writing draws fr...

The a16z Podcast is a show that is produced by Andreessen Horowitz, an investment fund based in Silicon Valley. The a16z Podcast covers topics including software engineering, biology, media, cryptocurrencies and entrepreneurship. A16z is one of the most popular podcasts about technology. Sonal Chokshi is the editor in chief at Andreessen Horowitz and the showrunner The post a16z Podcasting with So...

Coding bootcamps allow anyone to become a programmer at a faster pace than the traditional computer science education system. In the last five years, coding bootcamps have grown rapidly in popularity, with thousands of people gaining the necessary skills to work as a software engineer. Career Karma is a platform that allows individuals to find The post Career Karma: Coding Bootcamp Platform with R...

A hackathon is an organized event where participants work together to build a product or tool. Hackathons are about creativity, learning, and exploration. A developer that is participating in a hackathon is often working on something that is outside of their normal day-to-day focus.  Hackathons can provide significant value to the participants. Hackathons have led The post Hackathons with Jonathan...

Videos play a key role in the continuing education of a software engineer. Video can capture many different types of content that is useful for engineers: conference talks, tutorial videos, and podcast-style interviews are all popular formats of online video. YouTube has become the predominant source for video content about software engineering. The open nature The post TechPrimers: Software Engin...

Software companies such as Slack, Zoom, and Uber have recently gone public. When a company goes public, they issue a document called an S-1. Within the S-1, there is a wealth of information about the company, providing a detailed story about the company’s business model, economics, and future prospects. The S-1 describes the operating model The post Software IPOs with Tomasz Tunguz appeared first...

In the developed world, it is easy to take for granted that we grew up with computers. Technology is so pervasive in the United States that we have debates about how early in child development a human should be given a smartphone. Across much of Africa, there is a shortage of access to computers. Children The post TechLitAfrica: Computer Literacy in Africa with Tyler Cinnamon appeared first on Sof...

From Africa to India to Asia to South America–computer science and programming are rising in popularity in every emerging market. Each of these markets has regional needs for technology. Just like every culture develops its own food and television, every culture needs different types of applications to run their lives. In Vietnam, the day-to-day life The post Emerging Markets: Vietnam with C...

Facebook moves fast because of vision, collaboration, and trust. The fast pace of development is enabled by constantly improving infrastructure and a sense of unity throughout the company.  In Facebook’s early days, there was an emphasis on rapidly deploying new code to drive constant improvement and experimentation.  Product quality was maintained by engineers closely checking The post Facebook E...

Software engineers have a wide variety of media to choose from, including podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos, conferences. The amount of software engineering media that is available is growing and accelerating. Eight years ago, there were not as many options for information about software. Charles Max Wood founded Devchat.tv to create a network of podcasts and The post Software Media with Charles Max...