Today's guest is Martin Fowler!Martin is chief scientist at ThoughtWorks. He is one of the original signatories of the Agile Manifesto and author of several legendary books, among which there is Refactoring, which shares the name with this podcast and this newsletter. With Martin, we talked about the impact of AI on software development, from the d…

Refactored #153: “Clicking Up the Wrong Tree” On this episode of Refactored… Chris is in love with ClickUp on TikTok. Straight unhinged. But he’s not in love with ClickUp itself. The guys debate. All-in-one vs specialized tools? The classic debate. Chris tells a story about the wrong people being put in charge of the wrong “hard” things. Frank sees…

Refactored #152: “A Framework of Fear” On this episode of Refactored… Comment Block “With the explosion of AI tools I’m becoming more paranoid than ususal. How can I trust that any of these AI powered platforms are secure when I know how often we skip actual security reviews, and should I be worred that we’re prioritizing cool features over actual …

Today's guest is Aviv Ben Josef!Aviv has more than 20 years of experience in tech. He is an executive coach working with hundreds of engineering teams and leaders.With Aviv, we talked about profitable engineering, what makes engineering valuable, why impact is hard to measure,and what are the cultural and organizational traits that make engineering…

Refactored #151: “Horse Massacre” On this episode of Refactored… The guys debate risk and business context of “tech debt” and whether that term is even valid. Good luck getting management to care! Frank says microservices are just trendy, while Chris just complains about the operational complexity. Either way, maybe we can just… not?… for a while? …

Today's guest is Pat Kua!Pat is a professional engineering and leadership coach with more than 20 years of experience in tech.He was CTO of N26 and principal consultant at ThoughtWorks. He is an accomplished speaker and writes an awesome newsletter for tech leaders called Level Up.With Pat, we talked about his journey in tech, from Australia to Lon…

Refactored #150: “Octo-Kimono” On this episode of Refactored… Chris has been demoted! He explains how he fell from supreme executive to mere sea urchin. Chris rants about AWS. Those unreliable, gaslighting sons of… well, he has a bit of a strong reaction to some recent challenges. Frank corroborates: Digial Ocean (as a proxy for one of a dozen diff…

Today's guest is Francesco Dominidiato! Francesco Dominidiato is CTO at Moneyfarm, one of the largest wealth management companies in Europe, and former CTO at high-growth startups like Casavo and Docebo. During his career he scaled organizations from zero to hundreds of employees, and has incredible experience at all levels: from leading small team…

Today's guest is Stephanie Wong! Stephanie is the Head of Technical Marketing at Google Cloud, where she blends storytelling and technology to inspire developers and build customer growth. She’s an award-winning host, global keynote speaker, and creator of viral tech content.With Stephanie, we talked about her journey from sales to content creation…

Refactored #149: “WP Engine SHALL NOT Pass” On this episode of Refactored… NIST SP 800-63B-4 is out, and Chris couldn’t be happier. They have now officially barred password rotations (along with some other super great updates)! Seriously, Chris is like, too excited by this. Frank brings the story about the (now legal and very public) battle between…

Today's guest is Pramoda Vyasarao! Pramoda is a leadership and communication coach, he has 20+ years of experience in big tech, wrote the book “Beyond Your Limits”, and runs a course called Communication EngineeringWith Pramoda, we will talk about what good communication looks like, especially for engineers and managers, how it impacted his career …

Refactored #148: “DevOps: The Third Silo” On this episode of Refactored… The guys discuss the evolution of DevOps Still a philosophy. Still not a job title. But also, now definitely a job title. Danger zone: Did we just create a new silo? That would be… not great. Why do people elect .NET for web dev? The guys are baffled. Comment: “Serverless soun…

Refactored #147: “Pro Consoles: Nothing to See Here” On this episode of Refactored… Chris becomes a camera snob while Frank warns against combination appliances. Nothing CEO Carl Pei issues Return-To-Office mandate; publishes on LinkedIn. It’s impassioned It sounds logical It’s unsubstantiated TLDR: GTFO Are smartphones commoditized? Are “Pro” cons…

Today's guest is Camille Fournier! Camille is an accomplished CTO and executive with 20+ years of experience in tech, and author of the timeless The Manager’s Path, possibly the most influential book ever about engineering management.With Camille we talked about good vs bad management, the controversial new founder mode, career advice for managers …

Refactored #146: “Procedural Justice” On this episode of Refactored… Chris has a new GPT power use case. It’s not new, and it’s not his, but he pretends like it is. The guys avoid a longer-form discussion about popular game dev algos, like Perlin Noise and Voronoi Diagrams. Frank brings up Pandora (yeah, it’s still a thing) and the guys talk ML “fi…

Today's guest is David Heinemeier Hansson! David is the creator of Rails, co-founder & CTO of Basecamp, a NYT bestselling author, and professional racing driver for 10+ years!In our chat, we explored many of David's strong opinions on software development, including today's excessive complexity in software and infrastructure, the role of AI, and th…

Refactored #145: “Skibidi Rollbacks” On this episode of Refactored… Chris grouses about his Logitech BRIO. Decent camera, until the autofocus goes haywire. The guys talk M&A: Elgato, Corsiar, and Origin PC. AI hype: Chris brings a stupid story about “AI” being shoved into toothbrushes. “Move fast and break things”: A debate. Also: do you actually b…

Today's guest is Henry Poydar! Henry is CEO and founder at Steady, with more than 25 years of experience in tech leadership roles.With Henry, we talked about continuous coordination, an open source framework he co-created, providing a set of principles and practices for running modern, effective engineering teams.Here is what we talked about:(01:25…

Refactored #144: “Ethics in 4K” On this episode of Refactored… Frank just can’t seem to win with his new streaming setup. It’s 2024, should 4K really be this hard? The guys admire VoiceMeeter, the kitchen sink of audio (for windows). Robin Williams approved! Chris explains how fickle users are with new systems - even when they are Provably better™ …

Refactored #143: “21 Parameter Salute” On this episode of Refactored… The guys kick off with (probably the final) update on the CrowdStrike debacle. Spoiler: the proximal issue is code coverage, but the real villain is the lack of staged rollouts. External Technical Root Cause Analysis - PDF warning Is this a story of swiss cheese failure, or syste…

Today's guest is Dana Lawson! Dana is CTO at Netlify and held leadership roles at incredible companies like GitHub, New Relic, InVision, and more.With Dana, we talked about her journey, starting in the military, becoming a manager and major lessons she has learned. We also talked about how to hire engineers, how to create a diverse and inclusive te…

Refactored #142: “Certified Paranoia Engineer” On this episode of Refactored… Surveillance capitalism: Is your phone listening to you? No. It’s not. But it doesn’t need to. Chris goes ona mini-rant about misdirected paranoia. The guys debate possible legal culpability for ClownStrike following their epic foible. Frank takes a more measured stance (…

Today's guest is Irina Stanescu! Irina is a full-time engineering coach, course instructor, and former manager at Uber and Google.With Irina, we talked about her journey through Silicon Valley, big tech, and high growth startups, balancing IC and management duties, and achieving impact through influence.Here is what we talked about:(01:21) Introduc…

Refactored #141: “Gone Fishin’ for BSODs” On this episode of Refactored… Azure goes down, but no one seems to care after CrowdStrike breaks the world. The guys talk at length about the dangers of monoculture. Frank reminisces about the Winchester Mystery House, drawing a parallel to Google’s cobbled-together cloud services. Frank’s fishing analogy …

Refactored #140: “Streaming Interviews” On this episode of Refactored… Frank has a new streaming setup in anticipation of the upcoming WoW expansion. The guys talk about the accessibility of streaming and how kids are responding/adapting. Ghost Jobs: the next scourge we have to combat? Seriously? Like we don’t have enough nonsense in the market alr…

Today's guest is Greg Foster! Greg is CTO at Graphite, a tool that helps teams doing better code reviews, and smaller and faster code changes.With Greg, we talked about what good code reviews look like, how AI is changing the development process, and how the Graphite engineering team works.Here is what we talked about:(02:01) Introduction(03:06) Wh…

Refactored #139: “Independently Procrastinating” On this episode of Refactored… Frank built a patio and now his back hurts. The American Dream! Happy Independence Day! The guys banter about the often-overlooked intelligence and skill required in blue-collar work. Frank channels his inner Mike Rowe, but both champion the trades. Frank rants about De…

Today's guest is Malte Ubl! Malte is CTO at Vercel, the frontend cloud provider, and creator and maintainer of Next.js, the most popular React framework. Malte has also been Engineer Director at Google, where he led Google Search for desktop computers.With Malte, we deep dived into how Vercel works as a team, what could developer experience look li…

Today's guest is Anna Shipman! Anna is CTO at Kooth, former Technical Director at Financial Times, a Keynote speaker and accomplished author.With Anna, we talked about her journey in tech and how to develop a good technical strategy, drawing from stories and examples from her 20 plus years of engineering experience.Here is what we talked about:(00:…

Refactored #138: “Perplexfully Agile” On this episode of Refactored… Bitcoin. Why in the fundamentals is it hovering right around $69,420? (nice) Agile is dead! Everything is a lie! Agiles projects fail almost 3x more! The guys demolish this BS article. Frank emphasizes that Agile principles are often misinterpreted, leading to unnecessary complica…

Today's guest is Rebecca Murphey. Rebecca is field CTO at Swarmia, former manager at Stripe and Indeed, and the author of Build: Elements of an Effective Software Organization.With Rebecca, we talked about her journey through Indeed, Stripe and Swarmia and the three pillars of her book, business outcomes, developer productivity, and developer exper…

Today's guest is Rachel Potvin. Rachel is SVP of Engineering at Sanity, ex-VP of Engineering at Github, and previously worked at Google and Ubisoft. She has had an incredible career journey and is a world renowned speaker.With Rachel we talked about her journey across what feels like different generations of companies. We talked about scaling teams…

Refactored #137: “Job Search: The Next Generation” On this episode of Refactored… The guys dive into the hilarity that is r/LinkedInLunatics. For example: someone complaining about applicatns using AI to complete mindless tasks. Frank suggests a quick sanity check on potential employers, but Chris says anything over five minutes is (likely) excessi…

Today's guest is Denis Yarats. Denis is co-founder & CTO at Perplexity, one of my favorite products and one of the most successful AI startups today. Perplexity was founded less than two years ago and has just raised $250M in venture capital, at a $2B+ evaluation.With Denis, we talked about the state of AI products and his vision of where they're g…

Today's guest is Aditya Agarwal. Aditya is a legend: he joined Facebook as employee #10 and, years later, joined Dropbox as CTO when there were ~20 engineers. Today, he is partner at South Park Commons, through which he invested in more than 300 companies.Today we talked about early stage Facebook, differences and similarities with Dropbox, enginee…

Refactored #136: “Ball-Curious Coffee Badging” On this episode of Refactored… Chris reveals his long-standing “ball curiosity” and finally takes the plunge into the world of trackballs. Frank, however, maintains his dignity and sticks with a traditional mouse. Frank introduces the latest buzzwords in the remote work lexicon: “quiet quitting,” “coff…

Refactored #135: “Fiber Fiasco” On this episode of Refactored… Chris gets entangled in a suburban standoff where HOAs and ISPs play hot potato with his Internet dreams. Logitech, once a name synonymous with quality peripherals, now hocking an “AI” mouse. For real. Ansible and Pulumi pick up steam. No one loves Chef anymore. Terraform is still a thi…

Today's guest is Charity Majors, CTO at Honeycomb and one of myabsolute favorite writers. I believe I have recommended more articlesfrom her blog than any other author on the newsletter.Today we talked about observability, testing in production, continuous delivery, developer experience and much more.Here is what we talked about:(00:49) Introductio…

Today's guest is Laura Tacho, CTO at DX, engineering leadership coach, and speaker. At DX, she works with hundreds of companies on improving their developer experience and engineering productivity. Here is what we talked about: (02:20) Introduction(03:36) Why measure engineering productivity(05:58) Finding the proper framework(13:33) Value metrics …

Refactored #134: “Standard Issue Hostility” On this episode of Refactored… American Kennel Club makes a mockery of their trademark. Frank explains. Chris explains why he’s ruined his life. Again. Yet Another Email Migration. Gonna hashtag #YAEM for next time. Moves back to QWERTY because he loves the pain. The guys have a good debate over standards…

Today's guest is Daniel Vassallo, the creator of the Small Bets community, which counts more than 5 ,000 members and includes engineers, entrepreneurs, and creators of all kinds.Daniel is also a former software engineer at AWS, the author of The Good Parts of AWS and created a successful Twitter course.With Daniel, we will talk about his unconventi…

Refactored #133: “Helldevins 2: The Electric Intelligoo” On this episode of Refactored… Devin was a lie. Can’t make this stuff up. The guys eat humble pie, admitting their miscall on AI’s immediate threat to software engineering jobs. Helldivers 2 storms gaming, leaving Chris ever FOMOd. The pick of the week is the Makalu Max from Mountain. … and m…

Refactored #132: “SCANdelous calculus” On this episode of Refactored… Chris’ newest billion dollar idea: empowering despots with AI. Frank doesn’t even like GPS-monitoring. Frank’s WoW team achieves a milestone! He and his raiding group are among the top 0.19% on the new content. The guys virtually drool over Helldivers 2 while Chris admits he’s to…

Refactored #131: “Supply Chain Shenanigans” On this episode of Refactored… The XZ Utils library was compromised. Guys, this could have been very bad. The guys talk supply chain security — the weak[est?] point in your infrastructure? Frank makes a bold cliam; apparently “too many” is more than “some.” Breaking mathematical discoveries like this, you…

Today's guest is Thiago Ghisi, Director of Engineering at Nubank. Thiago has had an incredible tech career. Before Nubank, he worked at Apple, Amex and ThoughtWorks. He is also a deep thinker, hosts a podcast and constantly shares great advice on X and LinkedIn.During our chat with Thiago, we talked about what makes managers successful, career expe…

Refactored #130: “Jesus 2.0” On this episode of Refactored… Frank introduces a concept he is calling “Jesus 2.0 Projects” Projects that will solve everything™… once (if?) they ship. Projects that take real testicular fortitude to launch. Projects that also take real courage to terminate if they languish. Are executive sponsors to blame? Chris rumag…

Andrew Weaver is co-founder and CEO of CTO Academy, an educational product that works with thousands of CTO today. Andrew has over 25+ years of executive-level experience with companies of various size, including enterprises, SME and early-stage companies across multiple sectors. With Andrew, we discussed gaining the proper skillset to be a good CT…

Refactored #129: “World of WarCAP” On this episode of Refactored… MongoDB. The wrong choice for your website, but thankfully at least it’s “Web Scale”. Chris rants. Hard. Postgres has “inexact” numerics. Today Chris learned. NewSQL lets you pretend to break the CAP Theorem for your ACID RDBMS. Frank has a bone to pick with Blizzards implementation …

Wes Kao is a marketing executive, entrepreneur, and advisor who writes an amazing newsletter for high-performers in tech. She is co-founder of Maven, an edtech company that raised $25M from First Round and Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, she co-founded the altMBA with bestselling author Seth Godin. Here is what we talked about: (00:00) Introductio…

Refactored #128: “Jobs Destroyed or Prevented” On this episode of Refactored… It was Pi Day! The guys… well, the guys basically just complain. Devin exists now. The guys debate whether “he” (is that misgendering?) will replace you. Chris claims peak mania, and Primeagen has some great commentary. Frank points towards the… uh… bold? stupid? boring? …