This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Rachel Laycock, Global CTO of Thoughtworks, about how the company's Technology Radar process captures technology trends around the globe. She is sceptical of the current AI efficiency hype, emphasizing that the real value of generative AI tools lies in solving complex problems like legacy code comprehension rather than j...
Jun 13, 2025•29 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Sergii Gorbachov, a staff engineer at Slack, about how they successfully used AI combined with traditional coding approaches to migrate 20,000 tests in 10 months, discovering that AI alone was insufficient and required human oversight and conventional tools to work effectively. Read a transcript of this interview: https:...
Jun 06, 2025•23 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Emerson Murphy-Hill about how measuring developer productivity is tricky, why team dynamics and psychological safety matter more than things like meeting load, the impact of systemic bias and how new AI tools are shaping equity in engineering - sometimes helping, but sometimes risking new kinds of unfairness. Read a trans...
May 30, 2025•35 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Bhavani Vangala about creating powerful yet simple technology solutions, taking a balanced approach to AI tools, fostering inclusive team environments, and empowering women in tech leadership through focusing on strengths rather than societal constraints. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4d9Dqz0 Subscr...
May 23, 2025•29 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. This is the Engineering Culture Trends Report for 2025. Featuring the InfoQ editorial team and special guest Charity Majors, they discuss how AI is transforming software development with dramatic productivity gains alongside quality concerns, emphasize the continued importance of team collaboration, observability, engineering metrics, and mentorship of junior engineers in creating high-performing ...
May 09, 2025•1 hr 7 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to John Gesimondo about how to leverage generative AI tools to support sustainable mental peace and productivity in the complex, interruption-prone world of software engineering - especially for neurodivergent individuals - by developing a practical framework that addresses emotional recovery, overcoming being stuck, struct...
May 02, 2025•28 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Erin Doyle about her journey as a generalist engineer, her passion for web accessibility, the importance of empathy and psychological safety in engineering teams, and her commitment to building better developer experiences by fostering collaboration, continuous learning, and vulnerability among technical professionals. R...
Apr 25, 2025•31 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke with Trisha Gee about the challenges and importance of addressing flaky tests, their impact on developer productivity and morale, best practices for testing, and broader concepts of measuring and improving developer productivity. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4iiUC6a Subscribe to the Software Architec...
Apr 18, 2025•32 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Adam Sandman about how generative AI is transforming software development and testing by automating mundane tasks, enabling faster prototyping, and collapsing traditional roles into broader generalist positions, while also highlighting challenges like increased defects, ethical concerns, and the evolving nature of human-m...
Mar 31, 2025•27 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Pablo Fredrikson, a principal engineer at Bitso, about the importance of building a personal brand, sharing knowledge, and helping others in the tech industry. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/41SoQbu Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and exp...
Mar 28, 2025•24 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Claire Vo, Chief Product and Technology Officer at LaunchDarkly, about building high-performing, customer-centric teams, fostering a culture of experimentation, and preparing for the future of AI-driven software development. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4ih8MFY Subscribe to the Software Architects’ ...
Mar 18, 2025•25 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Sagar Batchu about building engineering teams in different environments, the transition from individual contributor to leadership roles, the importance of culture and autonomy in organizations, and the implications of AI agents on the future of APIs. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4kENUtG Subscribe t...
Mar 11, 2025•23 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Chad Whitacre about the Open Source Pledge, an initiative to encourage companies to financially support open-source maintainers to ensure the sustainability and security of the software they depend on. The goal is to address the social contract within open source, where companies benefit from freely available software and...
Mar 03, 2025•16 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Courtney Nash about her research on the unintended consequences of automation in software systems, the importance of learning from incidents and maintaining human expertise in complex systems. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4gY9ZjZ Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guid...
Feb 24, 2025•27 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Ganesh Datta about building excellent engineering organizations and treating platform engineering as a product. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3EtW3R6 Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns a...
Feb 21, 2025•29 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Inna Tokarev Sela, CEO of illumex, about implementing generative AI in development teams, emphasizing the critical need for robust governance across data, policy enforcement, and explainability layers. She also discusses how intentional workplace policies and female-oriented mentorship programs have helped achieve gender ...
Feb 14, 2025•20 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to John Heintz about the gap between technical expertise and user experience, highlighting the importance of understanding human psychology in data-driven decision-making. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3CjE3br Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news ...
Jan 31, 2025•24 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Sophie Weston, Principal Engineer at ClearBank, about her career in tech, the importance of good team practices, the evolution of DevOps, and the need for a supportive engineering culture. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3WqOBfz Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to...
Jan 24, 2025•24 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Geoffrey Huck about how software engineers can improve their communication skills, particularly with non-technical colleagues, by actively seeking feedback, using analogies and stories to explain technical concepts, varying their speaking style to keep audiences engaged, and overcoming introversion through practice and ex...
Jan 17, 2025•25 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Austin Vance, about the importance of intentional onboarding and culture-building, as well as his company's unique approach to compensation and the role of managers in retaining top talent. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3Bvsk9n Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide t...
Jan 10, 2025•24 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Neeraj Mainkar about the challenges of developing safe and usable medical device software in areas where software bugs can have life-and-death consequences, and how to approach these challenges through rigorous processes, user-centered design, and leveraging emerging technologies. Read a transcript of this interview: http...
Jan 03, 2025•29 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Olalekan Elesin about how generative AI tools can elevate the developer experience by enabling engineers to be more creative and productive. He stresses the need to manage expectations, develop prompt engineering skills, and maintain a focus on security and customer privacy when leveraging these tools in an enterprise set...
Dec 27, 2024•24 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to David Guttman about building effective engineering teams, avoiding common pitfalls, critiques of cargo cult practices, building great engineering culture and the importance of individual accountability. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3VFZgTi Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your mo...
Dec 20, 2024•24 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Erez Kaminski about the challenges and importance of developing regulated software for safety-critical systems, emphasizing the need for validated DevOps and AI integration in industries like healthcare and automotive, while highlighting the balance between innovation, safety, and regulatory compliance. Read a transcript ...
Dec 13, 2024•33 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Maria Apazoglou, Head of AI, BI & Data Platforms at Thomson Reuters, about as her experience in building great teams and democratizing the use of large language models across the organization. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4ikn34O Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly ...
Dec 06, 2024•21 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to former FBI agent Eric O’Neill about the growing threat of cyberattacks, cyber espionage and cybercrime, and how organizations and individuals can "think like a spy hunter" to better protect themselves. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4iaJud0 Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your mon...
Nov 29, 2024•21 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Nick Takavadii about participatory leadership practices and how to cultivate a workplace environment with psychological safety. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4fUd8kB Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on eme...
Nov 22, 2024•26 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Chris Cooney about emerging trends in software engineering such as the backlash against "Agile" practices, the growing importance of observability and people-focused metrics, and strategies for aligning teams around common goals while still preserving their autonomy. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3O5...
Nov 15, 2024•28 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to accessibility expert Sheri Byrne-Haber, about how digital accessibility goes far beyond just high contrast colours. The discussion is emphasizing that it encompasses making products and services fully usable by people with disabilities. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4hDSYNg Subscribe to the Software...
Nov 08, 2024•28 min
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Anders Indset, a Norwegian-born philosopher focusing on the implications of technology for humanity. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3YnDOTG Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technolo...
Nov 01, 2024•28 min
