Meet Mick West, whose career began in an unusual office setup — sandwiched between a kebab shop and a phone sex hotline. From there he worked all over Manchester, making computer games for Tiertex and Ocean.    Career opportunies brought him to California and to his own game dev company, Neversoft. At Neversoft, navigating team growth and tight deadlines, Mick played a key role in creating "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater." This wasn't just another game; it was a huge hit and secured Mick's legacy in the gaming world.   Join us as we explore Mick West's journey from a quirky start to the ..read more

What if your dedication to doing things right clashed with your company’s fast pace? Chris Krycho faced this very question at LinkedIn. His journey was marked by challenges: from the nuances of remote work to the struggle of influencing company culture, and a critical incident that put his principles to the test against the company’s push for speed. Chris’s story highlights the tension between the need for innovation and the importance of project health. This all led Chris to a pivotal decision: to stay and compromise his beliefs or to leave in pursuit of work that aligned with his principles ..read more

Greg Wilson has been on a decades-long quest to transform how we teach and talk about software design. From getting rejections for using the term “beautiful code,” to empowering scientists through workshops on Python and Unix, Greg has pushed to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Join us as Greg shares his failures and epiphanies along the way. You’ll hear how he revolutionized research computing by showing physicists the power of profilers. How he taught grad students the elegance of shell scripts. And how he’s crusaded to create a shared language to discuss software architecture wit ..read more

What if your dreams were suddenly ripped away? What if your talents vanished, your passions erased? That's what happened to Jason McDonald when a traumatic brain injury at 16 ravaged his planned destiny of becoming a doctor. Jason painfully rebuilt his ind and body from scratch - relearning to read, write, even speak.   A serendipitous discovery of coding ignited a new passion within Jason. He dove into the world of Python, even writing a popular programming book. His is a story of the incredible resilience of the human spirit when faced with life-altering challenges. One that calls ..read more

From the early days of exploring creative possibilities on a 486 computer in his childhood to developing one of today's most popular web frameworks, Evan You's journey is a tale of passion and innovation.    Evan started Vue.js while working at Google, just wanting to scratch his own itch for a lightweight JavaScript framework. But soon Vue started to gain a huge following.  Eventually Evan then faced a tough dilemma - should he take a leap of faith and devote himself fully to his fledgling open source project? Hear Evan's firsthand story of that key career transition. How the e ..read more

How did Spotify scale from 10 engineers to 100s to 1000s ...without slowing down? Without becoming corporate?  Facing an IPO deadline, Pia Nilsson worked with 300 teams to transform how Spotify built software. She spearheaded a movement that led them from working in silos to a unified developer platform.  Hear the inside story of how Spotify's Platform teams embraced transparency and customer focus to create Backstage — now used by companies worldwide.  It's an amazing tale of ingenuity and perseverance. Hear Spotify's secret to scaling engineering without losing speed and indep ..read more

Lost treasure. Conspiracy theories. Impossible tech demos.  Jan Sloot claimed to have invented revolutionary data compression that could fit a full movie into a tiny smart card chip. Top executives and investors witnessed his demos and became true believers, ready to bankroll this company into the stratosphere.  But was it all an elaborate illusion?  Join me as I unravel the perplexing story of Jan Sloot, the eccentric Dutch TV repairman who dazzled the tech world with his compression claims.  Discover the shady details and follow the bizarre twists and turns, as we try to ..read more

Today, we go behind the scenes at Chef - the game changing infrastructure automation tool. Adam Jacob created Chef, and it became a massively popular DevOps tool. But despite Chef's success, Adam constantly battled self-doubt and finding his footing as a leader.  In this raw episode, Adam shares how the pressure of going from sysadmin to startup CEO caused an identity crisis. He opens up about the motivational speech that left him in tears, realizing his self-worth was too tied to Chef's outcomes.  Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter   ..read more

Learning to code can feel impossible. Like facing a sheer rock wall with no ropes or harnesses. But what if there was a path up the mountain? A trail blazed smooth by master coders who went before?  In this episode, we'll follow that path. We'll hear the stories of legends like Seymour Papert, who championed active, project-based learning. Of Fred Brooks, who discovered that pairing accelerates learning. And more.  The research shows that with the right methods, motivation, and support, anyone can master learning curves and summit. So join me as we uncover the science behind learning ..read more

 Have you ever been frustrated with your job? Maybe not burnt out, but getting close to there? You used to love what you did, and it felt so creative and empowering, but then it starts to feel a bit more cookie cutter. Have you ever been frustrated with your whole life? The daily grind has taken what you love and it just doesn't feel the same anymore. Some of the magic just has slowly faded away. You don't know when it started, but it did.  Today's guest is Amir Rajan. He's hard to describe.     Is he a developer? Yes. An artist who sold everything that he owned for in ..read more