Your AI is learning to lie to you. It's not malicious—it's just trying to be a people-pleaser. This dangerous phenomenon, known as AI sycophancy, is what happens when we train models with outdated incentives. Dr. Tatyana Mamut, an anthropologist, economist, and the CEO of Wayfound, joins us to explain why treating AI like traditional software is a critical mistake. She provides a revolutionary playbook for building AI you can actually trust, starting with how to manage AI agents like employees w...
Jul 29, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 30
Is your team's AI strategy tailored for a fast-moving startup or a high-stakes enterprise? The answer could determine your success or failure. We're rejoined by Itamar Friedman, co-founder and CEO of Qodo, to break down what separates engineering teams that truly thrive with AI from those that are just experimenting, explaining why the path to success is fundamentally different for a startup that needs speed versus a large enterprise that must untangle bottlenecks. Itamar reveals his vision for ...
Jul 22, 2025•42 min•Season 5Ep. 29
Is your engineering team shipping more code but creating less business impact? We're joined by Chris Westerhold, Global Practice Director at ThoughtWorks, to confront why engineering waste is so difficult to define and eliminate. He explains that for many teams, the issue isn't a lack of tools but a lack of a clear 'North Star' to align their efforts with real business goals, diving into why so much well-intentioned work results in wasted effort and increased friction. Chris argues that most eff...
Jul 15, 2025•59 min•Season 5Ep. 28
You've bought the AI tools, but are you seeing the promised productivity gains? Join Dev Interrupted hosts Dan Lines and Ben Lloyd Pearson, as they break down the fundamental shift from AI coding assistants to intelligent, agentic systems. They discuss the key findings from their new guide, "The Six Trends Shaping the Future of AI-Driven Development," and challenge the common misconception that simply buying tools guarantees success by explaining why sustainable AI transformation depends less on...
Jul 08, 2025•59 min•Season 5Ep. 27
If you're still building products only for humans, you're already missing out on a massive new customer base: AI agents. Joining Dev Interrupted is Andrew Hamilton, co-founder and CTO of Layer (a first-of-it’s kind MCP agency) to unravel this monumental shift in how products will be discovered and consumed. He dives into how AI agents are rapidly evolving from developer tools to direct consumers of APIs and products, with new standards like the MCP spearheading this transformation by effectively...
Jul 01, 2025•49 min•Season 5Ep. 26
What if creating a professional video for your business was as simple as a single click? We're joined by Kabir Bedi, Head of Product for Image and Video Generation at Amazon Ads, to discuss how generative AI is making that a reality. He provides an inside look at Amazon's mission to democratize video advertising, empowering everyone from mom-and-pop shops to large enterprises with their innovative video generator that evolved from simply showing products to showcasing them in realistic, multi-sc...
Jun 24, 2025•49 min•Season 5Ep. 25
What if the traditional engineering career path is being fundamentally rewritten by AI? We're joined by Philipp Schmid, Senior AI Developer Relations Engineer at Google DeepMind, to explore how artificial intelligence is not just a tool, but a force reshaping engineering roles, team dynamics, and the foundational methods of skill development. Philipp, with his background at Hugging Face and now at the cutting edge with Google DeepMind, offers a unique perspective on the rise of AI-native teams a...
Jun 17, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 24
Imagine saving as much as 75 days of work within a six-month period, all through intelligent automation. Building on last week’s discussion about the critical shift from passive metrics to active productivity, host Ben Lloyd Pearson and LinearB co-founder Dan Lines now look forward to realities like this: 19% cycle time reduction and reclaiming significant engineering time. They move beyond common narratives surrounding AI to present actionable success stories and strategic approaches for engine...
Jun 10, 2025•36 min•Season 5Ep. 23
Are your teams feeling the intense pressure to "produce more" in an era increasingly dominated by AI? Join hosts Ben Lloyd Pearson and Dan Lines as they unpack a major shift in how engineering organizations must now approach productivity. Dan reveals the urgent challenges he hears directly from CTOs and VPs, who are grappling with how to define their AI strategy for genuine productivity gain, accurately measure its true impact, and understand the resulting implications for their workforce. In th...
Jun 03, 2025•40 min•Season 5Ep. 22
What can ancient languages and epic poems teach us about building resilient tech and future-proof teams? Host Andrew Zigler welcomes Matt Greenwood, Chief Innovation Officer of Two Sigma, for a conversation that uniquely blends their shared background in classical languages with over two decades of Matt’s experience at the forefront of financial technology. Matt unveils how this classical training has profoundly shaped his approach to building enduring innovation, fostering a resilient company c...
May 27, 2025•53 min•Season 5Ep. 21
What happens when the person trained to spot burnout becomes its next victim? Kelly Vaughn is a Senior Engineering Manager at Zapier, the author of the After Burnout Substack, and a trained therapist. She joins hosts Ben and Andrew to share her incredibly candid journey of discovering burnout in herself. Kelly reveals how she (despite her professional understanding of burnout's mechanisms) found herself deep in its grip, recounting the slow realizations like dwindling passion, increasing cynicis...
May 20, 2025•59 min•Season 5Ep. 20
Still stuck in a reactive loop with incident response, only fixing problems after they happen? JJ Tang, Co-founder and CEO of Rootly, joins host Andrew Zigler to reveal how to shift beyond reactive, leveraging powerful AI and an often-underestimated skill in engineering: genuine customer empathy. Discover how these elements are crucial for navigating the complexities of modern infrastructure and shaping the future of incident management. JJ explores the forefront of incident response automation,...
May 13, 2025•44 min•Season 5Ep. 19
Is front-end vs. back-end an antiquated way to structure engineering teams? With AI augmenting skills, a new model is emerging: the product engineer. This week, Andrew sits down with Lee Robinson, VP of Product at Vercel to crack open the future of the web. As a respected educator and voice in the webdev community ( check out his YouTube! ), Lee shares his unique perspective on building both cutting-edge tools and high-performing teams. As the VP of Product, Lee charts the evolution of developer...
May 06, 2025•55 min•Season 5Ep. 18
We've spent decades teaching ourselves to communicate with computers via text and clicks. Now, computers are learning to perceive the world like us: through sight and sound. What happens when software needs to sense, interpret, and act in real-time using voice and vision? This week, Andrew sits down with Russ d'Sa, Co-founder and CEO of LiveKit, whose technology acts as the crucial infrastructure enabling machines to interact using real-time voice and vision, impacting everything from ChatGPT to...
Apr 29, 2025•54 min•Season 5Ep. 17
Think building killer APIs like Stripe or Twilio is purely a technical feat? Think again. This week, we dive into why crafting successful APIs is fundamentally an organizational challenge, demanding internal excellence long before code is deployed. Sagar Batchu, co-founder and CEO of Speakeasy, joins us to unpack the crucial role of ownership, design principles, and why even internal APIs benefit from treating them like first-class products. Discover how Conway's Law dictates your API's fate and...
Apr 22, 2025•41 min•Season 5Ep. 16
When it comes to securing software, most developers feel like they're playing catch-up instead of setting the rules. Tanya Janca (SheHacksPurple), author of "Alice and Bob Learn Secure Coding," brings her 28 years of IT and security expertise—spanning counter-terrorism to enterprise training—to Dev Interrupted. She unpacks the common pitfalls teams face when security is treated as an afterthought, highlighting the developer frustration of being held accountable for security without the tools or ...
Apr 15, 2025•49 min•Season 5Ep. 15
Is your company rushing headlong into AI, only to find it's a 'square peg in a round hole'? This week, Andrew tackles the critical issue of building trust in AI systems with Brooke Hartley Moy, CEO and co-founder of Infactory. Brooke, with her experience at companies like Google and Samsung, cuts through the hype and reveals the biggest misconceptions businesses have about AI. We dive into the 'black box' problem, the importance of high-quality data, and why not all AI is created equal. From sea...
Apr 08, 2025•44 min•Season 5Ep. 14
AI is evolving at a breakneck speed, leaving engineering leaders with a critical dilemma: innovate or fall behind. But how do you experiment with AI without risking your credibility? Andrew Zigler sits down with Adnan Ijaz, Director of Product Management for Next Gen Developer Experience at AWS, to unpack the power of AI agents. Together they discuss how to leverage autonomous AI in your development workflow, and learn from real-world examples like Amazon Q. Dive into the evolving role of the de...
Apr 01, 2025•43 min•Season 5Ep. 13
Imagine a world where your engineering team ships features at lightning speed, and they're genuinely happy doing it. Sounds like a fantasy? It doesn't have to be. This week, we're diving into the secrets of building high-performing, happy engineering teams with Thanos Diacakis, a fractional CTO and engineering coach with over 25 years of experience spanning companies like Uber, where he optimizes software engineering teams and drives technical innovation. Thanos reveals the common mental models ...
Mar 25, 2025•55 min•Season 5Ep. 12
The promise of Test Driven Development (or TDD) remains unfulfilled. Like many other forms of aspirational development, the practice has fallen victim to countless buzzword cycles. What if the answer is already in our toolbox? This week, host Andrew Zigler sits down with Animesh Mishra, Senior Solutions Engineer at Diffblue, to unpack the gap between TDD's theoretical appeal and its practical challenges. Animesh draws from his extensive experience to explain how deterministic AI can address the ...
Mar 18, 2025•46 min•Season 5Ep. 11
If you're tired of hearing "shift left" in DevSecOps and seeing little real change, you're not alone. In this episode, David Mytton (CEO of ArcJet, founder of Console.dev) breaks down why traditional approaches to developer security often fail. He reveals the core conflict between developers (who want to build fast) and security teams (who want to mitigate risk), and explains why this misalignment of incentives can be detrimental for your software. Learn why simply handing devs more security too...
Mar 11, 2025•49 min•Season 5Ep. 10
This week, Andrew Zigler sits down with Dr. Maryam Ashoori, Senior Director of Product Management for watsonx at IBM. Together they discuss the evolving AI stack for enterprise and the growing skill gap challenging developers. Dr. Ashoori shares insights from a recent survey of 1,000 developers, highlighting the need for better tools and strategies to manage the growing AI tool sprawl. The conversation also explores the rise of AI agents, the potential of no-code AI development, and the future o...
Mar 04, 2025•46 min•Season 5Ep. 9
This week, Ben and Andrew dive into the (surprisingly?) complex world of calculator apps, analyze how AI is revolutionizing the technical interview, and dissect the emerging “two-tier” economy around AI. What side of the curve does your org fall on? Then, the conversation goes on site to San Francisco, where host Dan Lines hosts Rob Zuber (CTO, CircleCI) and Tara Hernandez (VP of Dev Productivity at MongoDB) for a discussion of LinearB's 2025 Software Engineering Benchmarks Report. We unpack the...
Feb 25, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Ben and Andrew open the show by dissecting why AI can't see gorillas, how big banks are stepping up to attract tech talent, and why focus is becoming the must-have resource for devs. Then, Vikram Chatterji, co-founder and CEO of Galileo, joins Andrew for a discussion on how engineering leaders can future-proof their AI strategy and navigate an emerging dilemma: the pressure to adopt AI to stay competitive, while justifying AI spend and avoiding risky investments. To accomplish this, Vikram empha...
Feb 18, 2025•41 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Live from San Francisco, Dev Interrupted explores the future of developer productivity with Ori Keren (CEO, LinearB) and Dharmesh Thakker (General Partner, Battery Ventures). The conversation, recorded before a live audience in San Francisco, examines the exciting possibilities and potential challenges of AI-powered tools, from code completion and review to the more advanced agentic AI. Moderated by Ben Lloyd Pearson, this episode captures the excitement of the event, including audience Q&A ...
Feb 11, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 5Ep. 6
To open the show, Ben and Andrew dive into the latest headlines about DeepSeek from last week. We answer questions like “why did everyone search ‘Jevons paradox'?” and discuss strategic AI investments from financial giants like Goldman Sachs. These moves underscore the growing importance of strong engineering leadership in the age of AI. Then, Luca Rossi of Refactoring joins us to discuss his latest research. Drawing from a comprehensive survey of engineering professionals (thanks to you!) , Luc...
Feb 04, 2025•52 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Ben and Andrew open the show by discussing the emergence of the DeepSeek AI model, Google's shakeup of the SEO landscape, and speculate on whether or not we're seeing the death of free APIs. Then, Ben sits down with Bernd Ruecker, Co-Founder and Chief Technologist at Camunda, to explore how low code solutions are changing the game for developers. They discuss how these tools allow developers to focus on more complex challenges, and delve into the importance of understanding when to leverage low ...
Jan 28, 2025•46 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Want to ship better software? Get in the fast lane. This week, hosts Ben Lloyd Pearson and Andrew Ziegler open the episode with a discussion of some of the tech topics dominating the news cycle like Microsoft's restructuring to focus on AI, a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. and a status check on New Year's resolutions. Then, joined by Dan Lines, they shift their focus to the 2025 Engineering Benchmarks Report by LinearB. This in-depth conversation explores the crucial link between developer exp...
Jan 21, 2025•31 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Is your company relying on surveys alone to bridge the gap between developers and managers? In this episode of Dev Interrupted, host Ben Lloyd Pearson and Dan Lines, COO of LinearB, dive into the perceived misalignment between engineers and their leaders on improving developer experience. Together, they emphasize the importance of data-driven insights over relying solely on surveys, highlighting how quantifiable metrics can illuminate issues like technical debt and build times. The conversation ...
Jan 14, 2025•42 min•Season 5Ep. 2
How do you build a culture that balances operational excellence with developer happiness? By shifting from firefighting to foresight. Kick off Season 5 of Dev Interrupted with hosts Ben Lloyd Pearson, Andrew Zigler, and Dan Lines as they share their New Year's resolutions and welcome Sowmya Subramanian , whose leadership journey spans Google, YouTube, and Oracle, to the show. From redefining metrics like DORA to adapting processes like Fix-It Weeks, Soumya discusses dismantling the “hero” mindse...
Jan 07, 2025•54 min•Season 5Ep. 1
