Software engineering at Big Tech and startups, from the inside. Deepdives with experienced engineers and tech professionals who share their hard-earned lessons, interesting stories and advice they have on building software.
Especially relevant for software engineers and engineering leaders: useful for those working in tech.
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
Brought to You By: • Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages. • Buildkite – CI software built to absorb whatever your coding agents throw at the build queue • Sentry – application monitoring software considered “not bad” by millions of developers — Kelsey Hightower went from a self-taught technician installing DSL modems to becoming one of Google’s elite Distinguished Engineers, whom the CEO of Microsoft pers...
Brought to You By: • Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages. • WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. • turbopuffer – a vector and full-text search engine built on object storage. It’s fast, cheap, and extremely scalable. — OpenCode is one of the fastest-growing AI developer tools around, surging in just a few months from roughly 650,000 monthly active users to nearly 8 million, and ...
This episode features Alice Ryhl, a software engineer at Google and core maintainer of Tokio, delving into the unique aspects of the Rust programming language. She highlights Rust's robust type system, explicit error handling, and memory safety features, explaining why developers trust it for reliable, high-performance applications from backend servers to the Linux kernel. The discussion also covers Rust's distinctive ownership model, the unsafe keyword, its open-source governance via RFCs, and the future potential of AI in Rust development.
Brought to You By: • Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages. • WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. • turbopuffer – a vector and full-text search engine built on object storage. It’s fast, cheap, and extremely scalable. — Anders Hejlsberg is a living legend and one of the most influential programming language designers of all time. He created Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and also Type...
Join Mario Zechner, creator of the minimalist AI coding agent Pi, and Armin Ronacher, creator of Flask, for a deep dive into the fascinating and sometimes challenging world of AI in software development. They discuss the origins and philosophy behind Pi's self-modifying capabilities, learnings from 30+ engineering teams adopting AI, and the critical downsides of over-automation, including declining code quality and the erosion of open source maintainability. The conversation highlights the essential role of human judgment, the hidden costs of complexity, and the need for developers to "slow the f down" to prioritize quality and thoughtful integration of AI tools.
Brought to You By: • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Sonar – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review • WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. — Martin Kleppmann is a researcher and the author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications , one of the most influential books on modern distributed systems. As of this month, the second, heavily updated edition of the book is out . In this episode of ...
DHH, creator of Ruby on Rails, details his radical embrace of AI agents for coding after initial skepticism, transforming his workflow at 37signals. He shares insights on their design-centric product development, the uneven impact of AI on junior versus senior engineers, and the future of software craftsmanship, all while emphasizing the joy of building.
Brought to You By: • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Sonar – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review • WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. — Thuan Pham was Uber's first and longest-serving CTO, and today he’s the CTO of Faire, a B2B wholesale platform. Back when Thuan joined Uber, it had around 40 engineers and 30,000 rides per day, and the system crashed multiple times a week. Over seven...
Engineer #19 Jean Lee recounts WhatsApp's early days, revealing how a lean team supported hundreds of millions of users across eight platforms by prioritizing simplicity and user experience over features. She details the technical choices like Erlang, the unique culture of trust without formal processes, and the strategic decision to slow growth with a $1 annual fee. Jean also shares her experience during the Facebook acquisition, her transition to management, and insights into performance reviews and AI's impact on modern engineering.
Veteran engineer Steve Yegge delves into how AI is fundamentally transforming software development, predicting the demise of manual coding and significant industry disruption. He introduces his 8 levels of AI adoption, critiques big tech's slow response, and highlights the rise of hyper-productive small teams. Yegge also covers the "vampiric" burnout effect of AI, the importance of a new work-life balance, and shares insights from his AI agent orchestrator, Gastown, emphasizing that engineers must embrace change or risk being left behind.
Brought to You By: • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Sonar – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review • WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. — Boris Cherny is the creator and Head of Claude Code at Anthropic. He previously spent five years at Meta as a Principal Engineer and is the author of the book Programming TypeScript . In this episode of Pragmatic Engineer , we went through how Claude...
This episode features Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp and creator of Ghostty, detailing his career from self-taught programmer to influential infrastructure engineer. He recounts HashiCorp's origins, its challenging path to profitability through open-core, and the near acquisition by VMware. Mitchell also provides an unfiltered take on major cloud providers and discusses how AI agents have revolutionized his coding workflow, fundamentally reshaping open-source development, Git practices, and the future role of software engineers.
Brought to You By: • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Sonar – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review • WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. — Andrey Breslav is the creator of Kotlin and the founder of CodeSpeak , a new programming language that aims to reduce boilerplate by replacing trivial code with concise, plain-English descriptions. He led Kotlin’s design at JetBrains through its earl...
In this episode, influential software engineer Grady Booch provides a historical overview of software engineering's evolution through three "golden ages," each driven by rising levels of abstraction. He discusses how past technological shifts, from assembly language to high-level programming, sparked similar existential concerns among developers. Booch argues that AI's current impact is another such abstraction layer, freeing engineers from tedium to focus on complex systems, ethical considerations, and human-centric problems, rather than automating the entire profession.
Peter Steinberger, creator of PSPDFKit and the groundbreaking AI agent Moltbot, discusses his radical shift to AI-first software development. He explains how he now "weaves" code, trusting AI to write and test, and views pull requests as "prompt requests." Peter delves into the mental shift required, the importance of closing feedback loops, and how this new paradigm changes team structures, planning, and traditional CI/CD, envisioning a future where highly competent "builders" work alongside intelligent agents.
Brought to You By: • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Sonar – The makers of SonarQube, the industry standard for automated code review • WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready. — Amazon S3 is one of the largest distributed systems ever built, storing and serving data for a significant portion of the internet. Behind its simple interfaces hides an enormous amount of engineering work, careful tradeoffs, and long-term thinking. ...
This episode features Bryan Cantrill, co-founder and CTO of Oxide, tracing the evolution of computing infrastructure from the dot-com boom and bust to the modern cloud era. He delves into how Sun Microsystems dominated early web infrastructure, the unexpected innovations spurred by economic downturns, and the profound impact of open source, x86, and AWS. The conversation also explores the strategic shift towards custom, on-premise hardware for hyperscalers, Oxide's unique approach to designing systems from first principles, and their transparent, uniform compensation model. Bryan also shares his perspective on the practical uses and limitations of AI tools in both software and hardware engineering, emphasizing the enduring need for human ingenuity, diverse teams, and continuous learning in a rapidly changing tech landscape.
Brought to You By: • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Linear — The system for modern product development. — Michelle Lim joined Warp as engineer number one and is now building her own startup, Flint. She brings a strong product-first mindset shaped by her time at Facebook, Slack, Robinhood, and Warp. Michelle shares why she chose Warp over safer offers, how she evaluates early-stage opportunities, and what she believes distinguishes great fo...
Johannes Dahse, VP of Code Security at Sonar, discusses how software engineers can write more secure code. The episode delves into the evolving ownership of code security, emphasizing developer responsibility while outlining the crucial role of specialized security teams. It covers essential security practices, common tools like SAST and SCA, and the emerging challenges and opportunities presented by AI in code generation and analysis, including new vulnerabilities like prompt injection. Practical advice is offered on achieving
In this episode, influential software architect Martin Fowler explores AI's profound impact on software development, comparing it to the shift from assembly to high-level languages due to its non-deterministic nature. He emphasizes the critical need for testing AI-generated code, the dangers of "vibe coding" without understanding, and why refactoring is more vital than ever. Fowler also reflects on the origins of the Agile Manifesto and offers advice for junior engineers, discussing the current macroeconomic challenges facing the tech industry.
In this episode, Netflix CTO Elizabeth Stone offers an inside look at the company's distinctive engineering culture, from managing an unprecedented scale of operations to building its own content delivery network and "Pitch to Play" pipeline. She discusses how engineers are empowered with significant autonomy, balanced by guardrails for high-stakes projects like Netflix Live, and how the company fosters learning from failures without formal performance reviews. The conversation also covers Netflix's strategic adoption of AI tools, its investment in both new grads and senior talent, and its extensive contributions to open source innovation.
Chris Lattner, creator of LLVM and Swift, shares his journey from revolutionizing compiler technology and iOS development to tackling high-performance AI engineering with Mojo. He discusses the challenges of designing languages, the evolution of Swift, and his insights from Google and Tesla. Lattner explains how Mojo aims to unify hardware-specific AI software stacks and empower developers with accessible, high-performance programming for diverse accelerators.
Addy Osmani, Head of Chrome Developer Experience at Google and author of "Beyond Vibe Coding," discusses the transformative impact of AI on software engineering. He distinguishes between "vibe coding" for rapid prototyping and responsible AI-assisted engineering, emphasizing the critical role of human oversight, testing, and understanding generated code. The conversation delves into the "70% Problem," where AI excels at initial development but struggles with the final quality and security, highlighting the increased value of experienced engineers.
Brought to You By: • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. Something interesting is happening with the latest generation of tech giants. Rather than building advanced experimentation tools themselves, companies like Anthropic, Figma, Notion and a bunch of others… are just using Statsig. Statsig has rebuilt this entire suite of data tools that was available at maybe 10 or 15 giants until now. Check out Statsig. • Linear – The system for modern product d...
Armin Ronacher, creator of Flask and co-founder of a new AI-first startup, shares his expert views on how different programming languages like Python, Go, Rust, and TypeScript stack up for various types of work, especially for startups. He details his dramatic shift in perspective on AI coding tools, now leveraging "AI interns" to accelerate development and tackle previously unfeasible tasks like debugging and creating repro cases. The discussion also delves into crucial lessons learned about error handling during his tenure at Sentry, highlighting the challenges in language design and the software development lifecycle that often deprioritize robust error reporting.
Join Charles-Axel Dein, an original Uber engineer, as he dissects the realities of hypergrowth startups like Uber and CloudKitchens. He offers practical advice on what makes engineers excel, from personal productivity and project leadership to navigating hiring and effectively combating imposter syndrome. The conversation also explores AI's evolving role in software engineering and hiring, along with unique reading recommendations for career growth.
Brought to You By: • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. Statsig built a complete set of data tools that allow engineering teams to measure the impact of their work. This toolkit is SO valuable to so many teams, that OpenAI - who was a huge user of Statsig - decided to acquire the company, the news announced last week. Talk about validation! Check out Statsig. • Linear – The system for modern product development. Here’s an interesting story: OpenAI s...
This episode features Peter Walker of Carta, who breaks down the dynamic changes in venture capital and startups, particularly in the age of AI. They delve into why fewer companies receive funding despite high VC investment, the dramatic hiring slowdown, the rise of solo founders, and the increasing importance of ARR per FTE. The discussion also covers complex funding mechanisms like bridge and down rounds, employee equity, and practical advice for engineers evaluating or thriving in the current startup ecosystem.
Supported by Our Partners • Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. • Graphite — The AI developer productivity platform. — There’s no shortage of bold claims about AI and developer productivity, but how do you separate signal from noise? In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Laura Tacho, CTO at DX, to cut through the hype and share how well (or not) AI tools are actually working inside engineering orgs. Laura shares insights from DX’s r...
In this episode, legendary software engineer Steve Yegge delves into his experiences at Amazon and Google, reflecting on Google's consistent struggles with building platforms and the notorious 'interview anti-loop.' He shares why he came out of retirement to work with AI, predicting the rise of 'AI Fixers' and a shift towards a meritocracy in software engineering. Yegge also introduces 'vibe coding,' offering practical advice for navigating the deceptively complex world of AI-assisted development and emphasizing the urgency for developers to adapt to these transformative tools.
