In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with Dexter Horthy, CEO and Co-founder of Human Layer, to unpack what engineers are getting wrong about AI, especially when it comes to coding agents. From the obsession with “just throwing more tokens at the problem” to the reality of building scalable AI workflows, Dexter shares hard-earned insights on how to actually push models to their limits. They dive into the evolution of developer workflows, the rise of AI-powered software factories, and why unders...
May 28, 2026•33 min•Ep. 674
In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with AWS Senior Principal Engineer David Yanacek to explore the next evolution of DevOps. After two decades of building systems to reduce operational pain, David shares how AWS’s new DevOps Agent is pushing automation to a whole new level, autonomously diagnosing incidents, suggesting fixes, and proactively improving systems before engineers even log in. From pager overload to autonomous remediation, this conversation is a glimpse into a world where softwar...
May 14, 2026•31 min•Ep. 675
AI agents are moving fast, but the infrastructure behind them is still catching up. In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud , Corey Quinn sits down with Paper Compute CEO Brian “B Dougie” Douglas to explore building telemetry for AI agents, open-source infrastructure, token economics, and what it takes to create developer tooling in the AI era. From local-first observability to agent runtimes and the future of AI workflows, this conversation dives into what’s next for AI-powered development. S...
Apr 30, 2026•29 min•Ep. 673
What happens when you stop trying to serve everyone, and start focusing on the right customers? In this episode, Corey Quinn sits down with Corey Quinn (yes, really) to talk about specialization, scaling service businesses, and the power of saying no. From growing a digital agency from $20M to $200M to escaping founder-led sales, this conversation dives into practical lessons for founders, marketers, and leaders looking to scale with intention. Show highlights: (00:00) Specialization Mindset (00...
Apr 16, 2026•29 min•Ep. 672
Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should. In this episode, Ahmed Bebars, Principal Engineer at The New York Times, joins Corey Quinn to talk about real-world cloud decisions, Kubernetes complexity, and the constant trade-off between building your own solutions and buying existing ones. From home labs to enterprise architecture, they unpack what actually works, and what engineers often get wrong. Show Highlights: (00:19) Intro (01:09) From Imposter Syndrome (06:34) Honest Community F...
Apr 02, 2026•43 min•Ep. 671
What happens when cloud economics meets the messy reality of business, AI, and human behavior? Corey and J.R. Storment unpack why cloud cost management is less about math and more about psychology, the real difference between FinOps for AI vs. AI for FinOps , and why automation still struggles with edge cases (despite all the hype). Along the way, they explore multi-cloud complexity, the rise of consumption-based pricing, and how businesses are navigating massive, unpredictable spend across clou...
Mar 19, 2026•48 min•Ep. 670
In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud, host Corey Quinn sits down with Roi Lipman, CTO and co-founder of Falco DB, to unpack the evolving role of graph databases in a world overflowing with data stores. Roi shares his journey from building RedisGraph at Redis to spinning it out into Falco DB, along with his enduring love of the C programming language (dad jokes included). The conversation explores why graph databases remain niche, but powerful, especially for pathfinding problems like supply...
Mar 05, 2026•39 min•Ep. 669
This week on Screaming in the Cloud , Corey sits down with Chris Hill, CEO of Humble Pod, to talk about the messy, nuanced reality of AI in media. From secretly cloning Corey’s voice for an ad using ElevenLabs (and almost getting away with it) to the growing tension between polished production and authentic content, they unpack what AI can actually do versus what it claims to do. They explore the shifting economics of podcasting, the rise of video-first formats, Netflix’s entrance into the space...
Feb 19, 2026•27 min•Ep. 668
Eric Anderson, partner at VC firm Scale, talks about why coding agents changed software forever and why the AI bubble can't be avoided. Eric worked on Spot Instances at AWS and data products at Google before becoming a VC. He explains how companies can still compete against Anthropic and OpenAI by staying laser-focused instead of fighting on every front. Corey and Eric discuss why AWS didn’t kill all startups even when they launched competing products, why the AI bubble can't be avoided when com...
Feb 12, 2026•29 min•Ep. 667
Chase Douglas, CEO at Archodex, talks about AI security problems and why re:Invent has become a nightmare. Chase helps companies capture every AI interaction so they don't get in trouble with compliance. Corey and Chase discuss Shadow AI, why Corey runs Claude Code in an account called “Superfund,” and how re:Invent put metal spikes on benches so people couldn't sit down. They also talk about why AWS released fewer announcement than before, and why Chase is finally optimistic about AI coding too...
Feb 05, 2026•33 min•Ep. 666
Alyss Noland, who works on Cloud Dev Ecosystem at Nvidia, is back on the show to talk about building software with AI when you're not a real developer. Alyss runs a program that gives AI startups access to Nvidia GPUs and uses AI tools herself to build production software at Nvidia. Corey and Alyss discuss using AI to help curate newsletters without actually writing them, why humans still need to check everything, and the weird reality of people developing relationships with chatbots. Show Highl...
Jan 29, 2026•30 min•Ep. 665
Mike McQuaid, Project Leader of Homebrew, joins Corey Quinn to share how a package manager conceived in a London pub became essential for 10 million Mac users. Homebrew lets you install software with one command instead of downloading files and clicking through installers, maintained by just 30 people who each get $300 a month. Mike shares the origin story from a drunken conversation about package management, explains how Homebrew Bundle can set up a new Mac with one command, and why Homebrew re...
Jan 27, 2026•41 min•Ep. 664
When your website stops working at 3 AM, you need to answer one question fast: Is it my code or is a big cloud provider having problems? Omri Sass from Datadog explains updog.ai, a tool that monitors whether major services like AWS, CloudFlare, and others are actually working. Instead of asking people to report problems like Down Detector does, updog uses real data from thousands of computers to detect when services go down. Omri shares why this took 6 years to build, how they process massive am...
Jan 22, 2026•31 min•Ep. 663
Hunter Leath, CEO of Archil, spent 8 years building Amazon's EFS file storage system, learning exactly why making cloud storage act like a hard drive always fails. Old programs need hard drives, but cloud storage doesn't work like hard drives—a problem that's existed for 20 years. Now Hunter's building Archil, which puts super-fast storage between programs and S3 so they can finally work together. Your programs think they're talking to a regular disk while your data lives safely in the cloud. Hu...
Jan 20, 2026•32 min•Ep. 662
When AWS has a major outage, what actually happens behind the scenes? Ben Hartshorne, a principal engineer at Honeycomb, joins Corey Quinn to discuss a recent AWS outage and how they kept customer data safe even when their systems couldn't fully work. Ben explains why building services that expect things to break is the only way to survive these outages. Ben also shares how Honeycomb used its own tools to cut their AWS Lambda costs in half by tracking five different things in a spreadsheet and m...
Jan 15, 2026•36 min•Ep. 661
R. Tyler Croy, a principal engineer at Scribd, joins Corey Quinn to explain what happens when simple tasks cost $100,000. Checking if files are damaged? $100K. Using newer S3 tools? Way too expensive. Normal solutions don't work anymore. Tyler shares how with this much data, you can't just throw money at the problem, but rather you have to engineer your way out. About R. Tyler: R. Tyler Croy leads infrastructure architecture at Scribd and has been an open source developer for over 14 years. His ...
Jan 13, 2026•34 min•Ep. 660
Corey Quinn sits down with Avery Pennarun, co-founder and CEO of Tailscale, for a deep dive into how the company is reinventing networking for the modern era. From finally making VPNs behave the way they should to tackling AI security with zero-click authentication, Avery shares candid insights on building infrastructure people actually love using, and love talking about. They get into everything: surviving 100% year-over-year growth, why running on two tailnets at once is pure chaos, and how Ta...
Jan 08, 2026•44 min•Ep. 659
Most open source companies do the same thing. They take investor money, lock their best features behind paywalls, sell the company, and disappoint everyone. Grokability did something different. Jeremy Price, VP of Technology at Grokability talks with Corey Quinn about how they built a business that makes enough money without chasing endless growth. From why they use simple technology to how they run thousands of separate installations for customers, Jeremy explains what happens when you care mor...
Jan 06, 2026•31 min•Ep. 658
Corey Quinn reconnects with Keith Townsend, founder of The CTO Advisor, for a candid conversation about the massive gap between AI hype and enterprise reality. Keith shares why a biopharma company gave Microsoft Copilot a hard no, and why AI has genuinely 10x’d his personal productivity while Fortune 500 companies treat it like radioactive material. From building apps with Cursor to watching enterprises freeze in fear of being the next AI disaster in the news, Keith and Corey dig into why the to...
Dec 11, 2025•41 min•Ep. 657
In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud , Corey Quinn sits down with Rubrik’s GM of AI, Dev Rishi, to unpack the real story behind enterprise AI adoption, the rise of agentic systems, and why most organizations are still stuck in read-only mode. Dev breaks down how Rubrik’s Agent Rewind brings safety, observability, and resilience to AI-driven actions, solving the “Oh no, the agent deleted production data” problem before it happens. From deep learning’s evolution to the massive gap between con...
Dec 04, 2025•36 min•Ep. 656
André Arko, CEO of Spinel Cooperative and longtime Bundler maintainer, joins Corey Quinn to introduce RV, a new Ruby tool that installs Ruby in one second instead of 10-40 minutes by using precompiled binaries. Inspired by Python's UV, RV aims to simplify Ruby dependency management without the complexity of older tools like RVM and rbenv. They talk about why Ruby isn't actually dead, Apple's problem with shipping a five-year-old end-of-life Ruby in macOS, and the challenges of writing dependency...
Nov 13, 2025•41 min•Ep. 655
When attackers are smart enough to hit your backups, recovery becomes your best defense. Rubrik’s Chief Product Officer, Anneka Gupta, joins host Corey Quinn to break down what true cyber resilience looks like in today’s multi-cloud world. From AI-driven recovery to surviving ransomware with your data (and reputation) intact, this episode covers what it really takes to bounce back when everything goes sideways. Show Highlights (00:00) Introduction to Ransomware and Backups (00:25) Welcome to Scr...
Oct 30, 2025•34 min•Ep. 654
Deana Solis, 2022 FinOps Foundation Evangelist of the Year, joins Corey Quinn to discuss her winding career path from electrical engineering to healthcare IT to FinOps. She shares why certifications are "largely performative," warns that AI can turn your AWS bill into "a telephone number," and explains why NAT Gateway costs hit everyone from hobbyists to enterprises. The episode covers cloud repatriation conspiracy theories, translating between engineering and finance teams, and why good FinOps ...
Oct 16, 2025•40 min•Ep. 653
On this episode of Screaming in the Cloud , Corey welcomes back Chris Weichel, CTO of Ona (formerly Gitpod). Chris explains the rebrand and why Ona is building for a future where coding agents, not just humans, write software. They discuss what changes when agents spin up environments, why multi-agent workflows feel addictive, and how Ona is solving the scaling and safety challenges behind it. If you’re curious about the next wave of software engineering and how AI will reshape developer tools, ...
Oct 02, 2025•41 min•Ep. 652
Brian Scanlan, Senior Principal Engineer at Intercom, the company building Fin.ai , joins Corey Quinn on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss Intercom’s move from AWS Aurora to PlanetScale’s managed Vitess after years of scaling challenges with their Ruby on Rails monolith. He explains how 13 Aurora clusters created operational pain and why PlanetScale’s white-glove, partnership-driven model won out over Amazon’s building-block approach. The discussion also covers Intercom’s volunteer-based on-call...
Sep 18, 2025•44 min•Ep. 651
AI is rewriting the rules of code review and CodeRabbit is leading the charge. In this featured episode of Screaming in the Cloud , Harjot Gill shares with Corey Quinn how his team built the most-installed AI app on GitHub and GitLab, nailed positive unit economics, and turned code review into a powerful guardrail for the AI era. Show Highlights (0:00) Entrepreneurial Journey and Code Rabbit's Origin (3:06) The Broken Nature of Code Reviews (5:47) Developer Feedback and the Future of Code Review...
Sep 04, 2025•34 min•Ep. 650
In this episode of Screaming in the Cloud , Corey Quinn talks with Jonathan Schneider, CEO of Moderne and author on Java microservices and automated code remediation. They explore why upgrading legacy systems is so hard, Schneider’s journey from Netflix to building large-scale code transformation tools like OpenRewrite, and how major companies like Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft use it. They also discuss AI in software development, cutting through the hype to show where it genuinely helps, and the h...
Aug 21, 2025•33 min•Ep. 649
On this episode of Screaming in the Cloud , Corey Quinn talks with Simon Willison, founder of Datasette and creator of LLM CLI about AI’s realities versus the hype. They dive into Simon’s “lethal trifecta” of AI security risks, his prediction of a major breach within six months, and real-world use cases of his open source tools, from investigative journalism to OSINT sleuthing. Simon shares grounded insights on coding with AI, the real environmental impact, AGI skepticism, and why human expertis...
Aug 07, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 648
In this deep-dive episode, Corey Quinn and Ed Zitron break down the complex and often murky world of AI and the tech giants fueling today’s rapid innovation. From Nvidia’s soaring valuations to OpenAI’s shaky finances and Microsoft’s high-stakes gambles, they reveal the cracks hidden beneath all the hype. They navigate the tangled web of corporate finance, big investments, and what could happen if the AI boom falters whether it reshapes the economy or crashes spectacularly. With sharp takes on t...
Jul 24, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 647
Reliable software shouldn't be an accident, but for most developers it is. Jeremy Edberg, CEO of DBOS and the guy who scaled Reddit and Netflix, joins Corey Quinn to talk about his wild idea of saving your entire app into a database so it can never really break. They chat about Jeremy's "build for three" rule, a plan for scale without going crazy, why he set Reddit's servers to Arizona time to dodge daylight saving time, and how DBOS makes your app as tough as your data. Plus, Jeremy shares his ...
Jul 10, 2025•36 min•Ep. 646
