Dev Interrupted

AI is the biggest hype cycle happening in tech right now, but how do you know what’s actually going to make an impact for your product and team vs. what’s just new and shiny? This week, LinearB COO & Co-founder Dan Lines sits down with Louis Brandy, Member of Technical Staff OpenAI and ex-VP of Engineering at Rockset. Louis shares his unique perspective on the evolution of AI, drawing from his...

When we first saw the talk titled “Space Aliens Are Among Us, Your Product Roadmap is Realistic and Other Lies you Believe,” we knew we had to sit down with Best Egg’s Johnny Ray Austin at LeadingEng SF last year. Johnny joined our host Conor Bronsdon to discuss how engineering leaders can navigate unrealistic expectations and pressures, drawing from his experiences and relating product roadmaps t...

Engineering leaders have long used value stream management and CI/CD tools to improve software delivery practices. However, an increasing demand for cost and efficiency is leading to the adoption of new technologies. Enterprises are quickly adopting tools that combine deeper levels of visibility into the SDLC with net-new workflow automations, leading to a better developer experience and increased...

In this episode of Dev Interrupted, Conor Bronsdon is joined by Sanghamitra Goswami, Senior Director of Data Science and Machine Learning at PagerDuty. Sanghamitra shares her expertise in AI and data science, including how engineering teams can effectively leverage both within their organizations. She also explores the history and significance of LLMs, strategies for measuring success and ROI, and...

This week, guest host Ben Lloyd Pearson chats with Thayse Onofrio, Software Engineer at Clutch and ex Thoughtworks. Thayse discusses how micro frontends allow individual application components to be operated and deployed independently, helping teams avoid the complexities of a monolithic architecture. They cover the technicalities, challenges, and advantages of implementing micro frontends, includ...

Dan Lines is joined by Gil Broza, author of 'Deliver Better Results,' to discuss how you and your organization can achieve better results by focusing on processes. Gil shares his 20-year journey in the Agile field, focusing on product development, system thinking, prioritizing people, and mindful mindset adjustments. The conversation covers the book’s target audience, the concept of the...

This week, guest host Ben Lloyd Pearson sits down with Bloomberg’s Engineering Manager Luis Vega. Luis discusses the initial challenges of enhancing developer engagement with internal tooling. He outlines his approach to building internal applications that are as intuitive and engaging as Bloomberg's client-facing solutions, and how applying UX design principles and branding for tools dramati...

In our first Labs episode of the year, LinearB COO and Co-founder Dan Lines is joined by CTO Yishai Beeri to explore how elite engineering organizations set and report on their engineering goals.  Modern engineering leaders face a dual mandate of achieving operational excellence while aligning their work with business priorities. To achieve this, you need to deliver software predictably—projects n...

This week, I sat down with Neha Batra, VP of Engineering for Core Productivity at GitHub. Our conversation is about the value of taking calculated risks in engineering leadership, using a “risk budget," and how you can leverage your social capital to take risks that help your career. Neha also shares her insights on senior engineering leaders' challenges when aligning business needs with...

In the last few years, disengagement at work has become a massive issue. We learned from Dr. Andre Martin’s episode that 53% of managers are burnt out and 1 in 3 employees leave their jobs in the first 90 days. This week, we sat down with Chuck Lafferty, VP of CRM at ADP, to discuss ADP’s approach to employee engagement and innovation. Chuck dives into building trust within teams, innovative techn...

This week, our host Dan Lines sits down with Tara Hernandez, VP of Developer Productivity at MongoDB. Together, they explore the nuances of developer productivity and the impact of AI in engineering environments. Tara emphasizes that achieving developer productivity requires a focus on outcomes, reduced noise for developers, and a healthy balance between technology, processes, and communication. S...

In the past year, ransomware attacks have been up almost 300%, with over 50% targeting small businesses. To help mitigate this increase, Microsoft is launching their new Security Copilot, and we sat down with their SMB Security Strategy Head, Binil Pillai, to learn more. We dive into the importance of SMBs assessing their security posture, how to leverage AI for efficient threat detection and resp...

In this episode, host Conor Bronsdon talks with Melissa DePuydt, Sr. Director of Engineering at Upstatement. Melissa discusses how her background in journalism has uniquely positioned her to excel in engineering leadership roles. She highlights how thinking like a journalist has enhanced her ability to lead engineering teams effectively, particularly in planning, risk management, and decision-maki...

On this week’s episode, host Conor Bronsdon sits down with Emily Nakashima, VP of Engineering at Honeycomb.io, to discuss how you can prepare to be a VP of Engineering, and how the role differs among companies. Being a VPE varies based on company size, culture, and the existing team's makeup, and Emily provides valuable advice for engineers aspiring to leadership positions. Emily also discuss...

This week, host Conor Bronsdon welcomes back Kelly Vaughn, Director of Engineering at Spot AI, to talk about building influence as an engineering leader. Kelly shares insights on the importance of leadership skills for both individual contributor and managerial roles and outlines her three pillars of trust, communication, and empowerment. Conor and Kelly discuss strategies for staying technically...

On this week’s episode, host Conor Bronsdon is joined by Jason Krohn, Global Head of Delivery at Syngenta. Jason delves into how his teams at Syngenta leverage software engineering intelligence to achieve predictable delivery at scale. Jason also explores how aligning work with employees' passions contributes to success and retention at Syngenta. He discusses the challenges and solutions in i...

This week, host Dan Lines welcomes back Zach Goldberg, CTO and author of the book 'The Startup CTO's Handbook: Essential Skills and Best Practices for High Performing Engineering Teams.’ Zach shares insights from his extensive career as a CTO and his journey in writing a book that condenses the wisdom of numerous other influential works into a single, comprehensive guide. We explore the...

It doesn’t matter if you have an innovative technical strategy if you’re not solving problems the business cares about…  This week, host Conor Bronsdon sits down with Rob Zuber, CTO at CircleCI. They delve into the evolving role of engineering leaders, and the importance of building a technical strategy that aligns with overarching business goals. Throughout the conversation, Rob emphasizes the im...

On this week’s episode, host Conor Bronsdon sit down with Guilherme Sesterheim, SAP DevOps SRE Engineer at AWS. Guilherme delves into applying Chaos Engineering and DevOps principles to SAP, a domain traditionally seen as risk-averse and resistant to rapid innovation. With expertise in both open-source technologies and SAP, Guilherme shares how he’s bringing modern practices to SAP environments at...

On this week’s episode, our hosts Dan Lines and Conor Bronsdon are joined by long-time friend of the show, industry expert, and Director of Engineering at Spot AI, Kelly Vaughn. Together they tackle a range of topics, including how tax laws are impacting engineering teams, the evolving role of AI in software development, and the great build vs. buy debate. The conversation starts with Kelly and Da...

On this week's episode, we're joined by Carol Barrett, the Engineering Leader in Consumer Identity and Access at Netflix. Host Conor Bronsdon interviews Carol to learn about Netflix’s blueprint for success when building engineering teams, and how they foster a culture where inspiration and purpose are at the forefront. Carol shares her valuable insights on empowering engineers to make th...

In this week's episode of Dev Interrupted, co-host Conor Bronsdon is joined by David Yee, VP of Engineering at the New York Times. They dive into the often unseen aspects of organizational structures, discussing how every organization regardless of their defined values and principles, operates with a 'shadow'.  David discusses the role of senior leaders in addressing systemic proble...

What can you learn from the scaling issues OpenAI experienced when Chat-GPT went viral?  On this week’s episode, guest host Ben Lloyd Pearson is joined by Evan Morikawa, Engineering Manager at OpenAI. Join us for a first-hand look at the engineering challenges that came with Chat-GPT’s viral success, and the difficulties associated with scaling in response to the sudden platform popularity. They a...

Season 4 kicks off with a conversation with Gene Kim, author of several renowned books, including "The Phoenix Project," "The DevOps Handbook," and most recently, "Wiring the Winning Organization." In this episode, Gene candidly shares the trials behind writing what he considers one of his most challenging books, why it was a joy to partner with Steven Spear as a co-a...

Hosts Dan Lines, Conor Bronson, and Ben Lloyd Pearson team up for a special holiday edition of Dev Interrupted. In this season-ending episode, they revisit their favorite moments from Season 3 of the podcast,  share a glimpse of what listeners can expect in Season 4, and spread holiday cheer as they reflect on what they're thankful for. The team is taking a week off to enjoy the holidays. We’...