Become a better CTO/CPTO with these insights from David Gebhardt, CTO (and former CPTO) of mobile.de (Germany’s largest car vehicle marketplace). Originally the Head of Tech, David evolved into CPTO, eventually leading the 400-strong Product +Tech teams before evolving business needs led him to bring on a CPO and go back to being ‘just’ the CTO (“only” 250 people). He shares why in this great CTO podcast. Listen to find out: - Why he went from CTO to CTPO and back 🤔 - Self-Efficacy as CTO ✅: How to be effective and FEEL effective - Where innovation 💡 comes from (+ mobile.de’s Innovation Days Format) + Why PHP isn’t all that bad Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/95-david-gebhardt-cto-mobilede Brought to you by Instaffo - https://instaffo.com/cto

Let’s hack cybersecurity in 2024 with Melanie Rieback, Co-founder & CEO of Radically Open Security, the world’s first not-for-profit cybersecurity consultancy with a focus on PenTesting🔏. Melanie is on a mission to fix cybersecurity consulting by putting people before profits and empowering internal teams “how to fish” 🎣. Tune in to hear about the current cybersecurity landscape from the person who not only authored a viral RFID paper (“Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus?”), but also PenTested Tor, Homebrew and Greenpeace. Listen to find out: - What is the business model💸 behind Post Growth Entrepreneurship (90% of profits go towards Open Internet Initiatives via NLNet) - What to prioritise 🕵️‍♀️ in realistic internal IT policies (passwords, backups, updates..) - Internal vs. External Security Teams + Why she uses “Forgot My Password” as a “magic link” to access infrequent sites (and doesn’t remember the password on purpose)

Embrace the technical side 🔧 of the CTO role with Allan Leinwand, CTO of Webflow 🖱️ who has combined technical know-how with great products on every layer of the OSI Model: from setting up HP’s first ethernet, CISCO’s early networks, building the world’s first CDN at Digital Island, and continuing up the stack to enterprise cloud ☁️ (ServiceNow), social gaming​​ 🎮 (zynga), communications 💬 (Slack), eCommerce 🛒 (Shopify) and now webdesign 🎨(Webflow). Listen to find out; - Why deep technical knowledge 🧠 allows better products - How a monolith can combine individual code ownership and great deploy times 🤔 - How to attract 🧲 talent with a ‘boring’ stack (+ Innovation Lab 101) - How to embrace the role of a pre-IPO CTO 🧑‍🚀🚀 - How to stay technical as a CTO 🧑‍💻 - Why he ships small fixes from their #UX-Papercut channel Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/93-allan-leinwand-cto-webflow BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius (https://link.alphalist.com/work) and codecentric (https://link.alphalist.com/cc)

Want to become a better manager? Then manage yourself better! From managing the time you spend managing, and all the way to managing how you give your team new tasks... Let's get real with Johanna Rothman, whom they don’t call the Pragmatic Manager for nothing. You will love her straight-talking approach to management. After almost 40 years in management, she can boil down things to sharp principles that will make you either hand pump💯, shoot the link to your buddy🤣… or smile sheepishly🫣. Yip, she got you. (Don’t worry, we won’t judge. Patterns exist because everyone does them. Which is why we need people who have been around the block to call us out 📢on them). Listen to find out: - Why you need to manage yourself to better manage others - Micromanagement: A recipe for multitasking chaos🤯 and WIP overload. - Why Gantt Charts are bad👎. Use Flow Metrics and PERT instead. - Who actually needs to be in the C-Suite (HINT: Not 25 people 🤣) - + how things have changed since the 70s: from the CTO Role to Feedback loops. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/92-johanna-rothman-the-pragmatic-manager BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius (https://link.alphalist.com/work) and codecentric (https://link.alphalist.com/cc)

Empower your team with the right type of autonomy 🚀 as we define the balance in this CTO podcast with Andy Walker, who has years of experience leadings teams at Skyscanner and Google. After 30 years in tech, Andy finally has the time to share what his hard won insights about tech leadership. You will enjoy his nuanced approach to autonomous teams, team size and work-life balance. Listen to find out: Why the more senior you are, the less decisions you should make 🤔 How to give the right amount of autonomy by career stage 🧑‍💻 (and how to have the right conversations about it 💬) How to empower 🚀and support an autonomous team What is the ideal team size?🍕 (What happens beyond Dunbar’s Law?) What motivates your team? 🤗 (SPOILER: Autonomy, Mastery🌟, and Purpose ala Dan Pink) + why Daily Active Users is the Wrong Metric 🫣 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/91-andy-walker-former-senior-tech-leader-skyscanner-google BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius and code-centric

Invest your engineering resources better by truly understanding the core problem your product needs to solve with this CTO podcast featuring Bob Moesta, co-architect of the Jobs to be Done Theory. As an engineer-turned-product-guru, Bob’s explanation of Product Discovery will delight your nerd brain 🧠 (complete with references to set theory, push-pull forces, and the problem space) while being super practical 🔧about the challenges CTOs are dealing with (like scope creep and tradeoffs). Listen to find out: - Why “Build and They Will Come” is a Myth 🫣 - SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) vs. TAM - Why engineers should be involved in product discovery 🧐 - Customer Interviews: Who to Ask and What to Ask - Why tradeoffs should be influenced by the opinions of those who already bought 🫠 - Hypothesis Building Research vs Hypothesis Proving Research + go inside Tobi’s brain to understand his purchase of his expresso machine. ☕Was it a sudden purchase or were years of ‘forces’ at play? (“The Force(s) made me buy it” 🌬️) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/90-bob-moesta-co-architect-of-the-jobs-to-be-done-theory

Craft the ideal product strategy in this CTO podcast episode with Melissa Perri, author of “Escaping the Build Trap” and “Product Operations”.Find out how to become truly product-led: from your strategy to your metrics to your tooling. Listen to find out: - How to balance qualitative 😍 and quantitative data 🧪 in product - Were the mass layoffs caused by overhiring? 🫠Is it a natural part of growth or can companies avoid over scaling? - What does the ideal product strategy 🎯look like? - What is ProductOps⚙️ and why you need it - + how to handle your fellow exec’s "greatest idea ever" (AKA Build Trap Alert) 🚧 WARNING: LISTENING TO THIS PODCAST MIGHT CAUSE YOUR PRODUCT STRATEGY TO ACTUALLY BE SUPER FOCUSED AND USED. ONLY LISTEN IF YOU ARE NOT SCARED OF RESULTS. BROUGHT TO YOU BY: [codecentric](https://link.alphalist.com/cc), [Sipgate](https://link.alphalist.com/sipgate) and [WorkGenius](https://link.alphalist.com/work).

Stay on top of your professional development with these learning and productivity tips from Luca Rossi, whose refactoring.club newsletter 🌀 is read by 50k subscribers every week. After scaling Wanderio to 25M users 🚀 as founding CTO, Luca sat down to distill his experiences and in the process created the tech leadership content 📰 he so badly needed. With diagrams. 🖼️ In this alphalist CTO podcast, Luca shares what he has learned about leadership - including the self-leadership needed to structure one's time and effectively harvest the plethora of ideas published online into action. Listen to find out: - What is the flaw in the 'State of Flow"?🌊 - Why CTOs should write more ✍️ - How he structures his day 🌞 - Should CTOs be generalists?🤔 - How he organises his tech leadership 'news clippings' 🗂️ - Tobi getting real 🫣 about recurring 1:1s Listen here: Thank you to our sponsors codecentric, instaffo and WorkGenius

Reimagine version control systems with Scott Chacon, Co-founder of GitHub and GitButler. Because, even Scott, a Git Veteran, will admit it: ``` Git is a pain sometimes. 🫣 ``` There is a serious Merge Conflict ⚔️ between how modern developers code and the workflow ordained by Git in the Linux mailing list days. Version Control Systems need to be taken apart by First Principles 🧩 so they can be better adapted to the needs of modern software teams. And this is the branch he is busy with at GitButler 🔧 - which he invited us to checkout. Pull this episode to find out: - Is the Git Protocol still useful? Does it just need a better client? 🤔 - How to maximize the benefits of centralized version control systems 🫀 - Can we stream🚿 our code and commit less? + T180 calculator hacks Is there life beyond merge conflicts? 🌈 😅 Listen here to find out.

Is there a nice way to downsize? Mike Fisher, former CTO of Etsy, shares what he learned when the company downscaled by 27% in 2 rounds of layoffs right before he joined. Find out how you can help your team navigate this sensitive period - both pre- and post-layoff. - How much time⏳ you lose in a layoff (the productivity cost of layoff) - Why you can’t expect to cut costs ✂️ AND grow - Why Availability 🟢 needs to be prioritised as you downsize - Layoffing off Generalists vs. Specialists 🧑‍🔬 - How they migrated to the cloud ☁️

git checkout the future of software development with Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub. In this broad podcast, we discuss everything from refactoring and scaling to the CTO/CEO role, from open source to AI as a Dev Tool. Every day Thomas delves into the development of software development - so his 🧠 was a great brain to pick. Listen to find out: - Why refactoring 🧩 will always be a part of growth. - What was it like being integrated ☂️ into Microsoft post-M&A - What are GitHub’s current challenges 👷 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/85-thomas-dohmke-ceo-github

Find out the best way to measure Developer Experience 🧑‍💻in a way that truly enables ⚡ your developers (i.e. Developer Productivity) in this CTO podcast with Abi Noda - co-creator of the DevEx Framework and founder of Pull Panda. For years Abi has been on a quest to discover what developer metrics are the key to happier and more productive developers. He tried PR Analytics (he created Pull Panda🐼 - acquired by GitHub) and DORA, before teaming up with other Developer Productivity researchers 🧑‍🔬 to create a new framework which focuses on improving developer experience (DevEx) to improve productivity. Listen to find out: - Why measure Developer Productivity? 🤷(from both CTO and developer perspective) - How to survey your developers? (Sampling, Frequency and Length)📝 - How DORA is done wrong in most companies + Why he prefers bootstrapping -🥾 but got a unique type of funding for his 4th company. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/84-abi-noda-co-creator-of-the-devex-metrics-framework BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Storyblok (https://link.alphalist.com/cms) and WorkGenius (www.workgenius.com/alphalist). TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Introduction 05:09 His Bootstrapping Inspiration 06:29 When investment is good 09:07 Why measure developer productivity? 13:28 Pull Analytics Approach 16:47 How it backfired at GitHub 17:13 Companies Misuse of Data 19:01 Why DORA didn’t work 20:40 'Shiny New Object Syndrome' 22:10 The right and wrong way to do DORA 24:39 How Developer Metrics have Evolved 33:28 Small Teams and Measuring DX 34:32 Measuring DX in larger companies 36:09 Creating a survey (frequency, length, and sampling) 41:21 Honesty in survey responses 43:48 Tips for getting started

Get inspired about architecture - that of computers and teams - in this CTO podcast with Aviran Mordo, VP Engineering at Wix. I really enjoyed talking with Aviran about both the technical nitty gritty of powering millions of websites as well as the Wix model which - unlike the Spotify model - is still in use at its flagship company over a decade later Listen to find out: - How the Wix model works 🪗(+ hiring, personal development and communication across guilds and companies) - What is Platform-as-a-Runtime 🚄 - Why most microservices 🪢 are done wrong (and are costing you money) - How to encourage mentorship 🫶 - The infra that powers 7% of the web Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/83-aviran-mordo-vp-engineering-wix

Find out how to restructure your org using a matrix structure with Gertrud Kolb, CTO of eyeo (the company behind common adblockers). You will find out how Gertrud implemented changes across an already large organisation - from the team typologies to team communications. Listen to find out: - How to restructure using team topology 🧩best practices in a large organisation. - How to improve requirements engineering ✅ - How to gradually consolidate team communications 💬 - How ad-blockers are working advertisers to enable privacy-friendly 🎯 targeting + Behind-the-scenes at the world’s most popular adblocker Listen here: www.alphalist.com/podcast/82-gertrud-kolb-cto-eyeo --- Timestamps (1:58) - Gertrud’s Nerd Journey (8:24) - Restructuring your org with Team Topologies (15:04) - Working in an interdisciplinary & cross team way (16:00) - Navigating interdependencies with multiple products, teams and interests (21:55) - Inside Eyeo’s Matrix Organization (24:09) - Integrating new companies into the org (28:13) - Consolidating Communication Tools (33:02) - The tech behind ad blocking (41:26) - The move to Ad Filtering -- BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Zoho - https://link.alphalist.com/zoho You have probably heard of Zoho. They have been around for 27 years and now offer an all-in-one platform with over 50 mission-critical apps that offer everything from sales to marketing and HR to accounting. All in one platform- connecting the entire enterprise, ensuring communication between departments. But its the user privacy that Zoho offers that makes it stand out. Not only do they not make money by using your data for advertising, but they also have EU datacenters which is a huge win for GDPR compliance See for yourself. Come to their user conference, named Zoholics on 26th and 27th of September 2023 in Cologne, where you can sit down with experts and get to know the people behind the software. Plus, you get 25% off with the promo code OMR_CTO. Just go to: www.link.alphalist.com/zoho

Find out how to do continuous product discovery with Teresa Torres who has taught over 12,000 people how to sustainably infuse their daily product decisions with customer input. You will find out why product should not be just a job title, but a mindset that the entire C-suite needs to share. Listen to find out: - What is an outcome-orientated mindset? Do we need OKRs?✅ - How to build a continuous feedback loop with customers 🪢 - Business success 👔 vs product discovery success 🫶 - What mistakes people make with product discovery 🕵️ - The pitfalls of founder-led product 🤳 (and how to avoid them) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/81-teresa-torres-author-of-continuous-discovery-habits

Find out how to use platform engineering to scale your DevOps 🚀with this hands-on podcast with Sarah Polan, Field CTO at HashiCorp. Sarah is passionate about 2 things: DevSecOps 🔏 and automating everything 🔁 (she even automates aspects of her childcare :)). Which is why this podcast episode is all about scalability 📈 - from attrition-proof DevOps to automated audits. This is a must-listen podcast for both CTOs who are new to Platform Engineering as well as those who are troubleshooting from the trenches. Listen to find out: - Why do we need platform engineering?🤔 From financial benefits to DevEx. - Is DevOps dead? Why platform teams is the only scalable way to do DevOps - How to get your platform and application teams to work together 🪢? - How to balance 🤹 autonomy and innovation with centralisation? - How to decide what to build at a platform level? 🧩 🏗 Does it differ by industry? Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/80-sarah-polan-field-cto-hashicorp?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=referral

Did you know that effective 1:1s will 3X your employee engagement? 🤩 Maximise your 1:1 meetings 🤝 by leveraging the meeting science discovered by Steven Rogelberg (Chancellor's Professor at UNC Charlotte and author of 2 top-ranked books about meeting science: “The Surprising Science of Meetings” and “Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings”). As an organisational psychologist 🧑‍🔬who has advised US Congress 🏛️and Fortune100 companies on workplace matters, Steven is here to share with CTOs the evidence-based 🧐 science that will not only maximise meetings, but also realise their full potential🚀. Listen to find out: - How can we realise the full potential of a 1:1 when it comes to relationships and productivity? Where do async tools fit in? - What are common mistakes to avoid in your 1:1? 🫣 - How often 🤔 should you meet with your direct reports? 🗓️ - How do you evaluate 🧪 the quality of your 1:1s? - How many DRs 👥 can a person have? Can you delegate the 1:1? Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/79-steven-rogelberg-author-of-glad-we-met-the-art-and-science-of-1-on-1-meetings

It is time to stop learning the computer’s programming language, and get computers to learn our language. Prepare think different - or should we say alien 👾 - in this CTO podcast with Stephen Wolfram (Founder & CEO of Wolfram Research). Find out why we need to use computational thinking to create code in a way humans can both write ✍️ and read 📖. Listen to find out: >> What is the programming workflow of the future? 🔮 (SPOILER: Think NLU + LLM + computational layer) >> What is a LUI (Linguistic User Interface) 💬? >> Why should you make your company computable 🖥️? >> What happens at the intersection of technology and judgement?🤔 >> Why the next development in LLMs won’t be so dramatic 📈 >> Why they run on-prem 🗄️? + why they livestream code reviews?🧑‍💻 Listen Here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/78-stephen-wolfram-founder-ceo-of-wolfram-research

Find out how to use tech to deliver (not distract from) business value in this CTO podcast featuring Vikas Gupta, CTO at Choco (a digital platform connecting suppliers to their restaurants), who previously held senior engineering roles at Uber and Dropbox. Listen find out : - ⚖️ How to balance product and platform initiatives - 🔍What the 5 dimensions are for evaluating a language - 🎩 CTPO vs 👷CTO + 🤠CPO - How to determine ROI when migrating from legacy - + Why he chose his tech stack Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/77-vikas-gupta-cto-choco

Get a handle on the latest developments in AI 🤩 in this CTO Podcast featuring Richard Socher, CEO of You.com (the world’s first AI-centric chat-based 💬 search engine). This is your opportunity to learn from the AI professor 🎓who co-authored the paper that introduced the term ‘prompt engineering’, created MetaMind 🧠(now powering Einstein at Salesforce) and pioneered many of the technologies everyone is hyping about today. But for Richard, its not hype. Its just the fusion of technology and business that he has been working on for years. Listen to discover: - How can chat-based search be monetised 💸? - How have MLOps evolved 🔄? - How will AI impact the job market? - What will happen to digital marketing in the age of AI?🤷 - When will we reach AGI? ⏳ (hint: not as soon as you think) + Search Engines: From the current tech complexity to future forms. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/76-richard-socher-ceo-you-dot-com

Buckle up for a journey through the evolution of DevOps with John Engates, the Field CTO at Cloudflare, who has been leading the charge since his days as CTO of Rackspace (2002-2018). Get ready for a fascinating ride as we explore the role of AI in DevOps and gain insights from a true industry veteran. Listen to discover: - How to handle incident response the Cloudflare way🚨: mission rooms, communication strategies, and best practices - Why we can't just turn off the internet? 🌐 The ethical considerations behind cyber warfare - The unique role of a 🧑‍🌾 Field CTO - How John puts ChatGPT to work 🛠️ Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/75-john-engates-field-cto-cloudflare

Dig deep into how to use generative AI as developer tool 🧑‍💻in this CTO podcast featuring Shawn ‘Swyx’ Wang. Shawn has not only headed Developer Experience at 3 Unicorns 🦄, but he is also the editor of the Latent Space AI/ML newsletter. Tune in to discover how generative AI will change programming and how to start exploring the world of LLMs. Learn: - How our infrastructure 🏗️ needs will evolve with the explosion of the AI frontier - How much time a CTO should spend trying out new technology vs. sticking with the tried and true ⚖️ - Why AI-native databases 🗃️ are the future + Best practices for using generative AI as a developer tool 🦾 Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/74-shawn-swyx-wang-developer-experience-expert

Focus on your CTO career in this podcast with Will Larson about leaving a CTO role, finding a new CTO role, and negotiating your compensation. Will is the thought leader behind the popular blog "Irrational Exuberance" and the book "An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management" and "Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track". Additionally, he is the former CTO of Calm who has also led teams at Uber, Digg, and Yahoo. Listen to find out: - How to find 🔍 the ideal CTO Role in 2023: Location 🌍, Stage, Domain, Culture 🤝 and Red Flags 🚩 - Moving on from your Current CTO role 👋: When, Why and How (succession, exit options etc.) - What to look out for in CTO💸 compensation and options - Why he predicts tech salaries will decrease in the 10 years Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/73-will-larson-thought-leader-irrational-exuberance-lethain

Like the UX of a SPA but developing it is a nightmare🤔? Then you should listen to this podcast about PESPA (Progressively Enhanced Single Page apps.🤩. You will learn from Kent C. Dodds, 💁‍♂️co-founder of Remix about this latest web architecture which combines the UX of a SPA (no full-page refreshes 🔄 with a better DX👨‍💻 (no code duplication and less mess🫣). With companies like Microsoft, Netflix, and LinkedIn incorporating it into their stack - it's the web’s next transition which you don’t want to miss out on. Listen to discover: - The Evolution ⏩of the Web Architecture: From Multi-Page Apps to Single Page Apps and everything in between - How older companies are injecting 💉SPA into their legacy MPA(Called PEMPA) - How to better the UI of error messages and validation - How can one achieve an 📵offline-first web app? - Remix vs. Nuxt vs. Flux Kent's skills as a seasoned software educator and Javascript influencer make this technical discussion a breeze to digest. ⚠️ CAUTION: LISTENING TO THIS PODCAST MIGHT LEAD TO SOME SERIOUS CODING BREAKTHROUGHS Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/72-kent-c-dodds-co-founder-remix

Learn about the future of front-end with Malte Ubl (CTO at Vercel). Malte is the creator of JSConf.eu and has extensive experience in engineering teams on projects like Wiz (the front-end framework Google still uses in most of their consumer apps) and Google Search (Desktop). Now he is at Vercel - mainstreaming the tools and techniques common in BigTech - to other tech companies. Listen to find out: >> The CTO Role: how he balances ⚖️ Product 💡 and Engineering 🔧 >> How to decide on a front-end stack - from frameworks to languages 👀 >> Where most Engineering A/B🧪 tests fail + The tech stack at Vercel Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/71-malte-ubl-cto-vercel

Learn out to run your remote 🌎 company effectively with tips from Dominik Angerer, co-founder, and CEO of Storyblok. He shares tips and insights on everything from remote recruiting to onboarding and engagement. Plus, he shares the story behind the Storyblok tech stack, and why, after years of being bootstrapped, they decided to seek funding. Listen to find out: - Remote Compensation 💸: How he uses data to adjust salaries - How to handle IT procurement 🖥️ and device management for a global team - How to source, recruit, and onboard a fully distributed team - How they split meetings into async and sync segments + What the ideal annual retreat 🏖️ looks like Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/70-dominik-angerer-cofounder-and-ceo-at-storyblok P.S. Storyblok buys their compensation datasets from here: https://www.erieri.com/

Find out how to optimize your cloud ☁️costs in this CTO podcast featuring David Linthicum (Chief Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte, Author of Insider’s Guide to Cloud Computing, and #1 Cloud Influencer). This is your opportunity to hear about the efficient use of cloud computing from someone whose 35-year 🫡 career includes serving as CTO at five companies, writing 15 books, publishing 7000 articles, presenting at 1000 conferences and 2000 webinars, and teaching popular courses on computing at Louisiana State University and LinkedIn Learning. Listen to find out: - What are the biggest mistakes 🫣 people make with their cloud setups? - How can you use FinOps 💸to cut your cloud costs? - How to get Cloud Repatriation (cloud + on-prem) and MultiCloud to work for you?🫶 - Why the MetaCloud/SuperCloud is the next big thing 🔥 Will cloud costs will drop soon?📉 Listen here: www.alphalist.com/podcast/69-david-linthicum-chief-cloud-strategy-office-deloitte-consulting

Find out how to price your SaaS product effectively 💸 in this podcast featuring Patrick Campbell of ProfitWell (a SaaS for subscription analytics, retention, and pricing solutions). He shares pricing insights he has learned by looking over 🧐 the data of 73 000 SaaS companies over the past decade! Listen to find out: You - How to get the right 🎯price for your SaaS Product - Freemium 🆓 or free trial? -Should you have a legacy 👴🏻 tier? - Usage-based 📈 or tier-based 📊 pricing? 🤔 - Why and how to change your price? 🔼 - Insight into the current ‘recession’ 📉 - Why it’s hard to sell an analytics product 🔍 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/68-patrick-campbell-founder-ceo-profitwell

Find out how to bootstrap and scale fast in this CTO podcast featuring Renaud Visage - Co-Founder & ex-CTO at Eventbrite🎟. He shares what he would do differently if he would bootstrap Eventbrite again, his approach to the evolving role of the founding CTO, and climate-friendly tech. Listen to find out: - Bootstrapping: Why you should hire senior devs 👨‍💻 as soon as possible - Cloud☁️ vs. On-Prem⚙️ - How recession📉 will change the start-up ecosystem - Climate + Tech: How to factor in climate♻️ to our tech - How to embrace your evolving role as CTO Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/67-renaud-visage-co-founder-ex-cto-eventbrite

Get insight into product analytics from Dr. Thanasis Noulas, VP Engineering at TradeRepublic - whose 15+ year data career has spanned industries as diverse as trading, accommodation (Booking.com & AirBnB), Mobility (Uber) and Content (Netflix). Listen to find out: - How to be data-informed when you can’t be data-driven (e.g. in a regulated industry ​​⚠️) - How to A/B test correctly (sample size, old users/new users, tools) - Build vs.Buy 🛒 and the data tech stack. - Why you should spend more time with your overperformers 🏆​​ than underperformers - What the recent tech layoffs teach us about transparency🔮 + his quarterly calendar ​​🗓️ defragmentation hack Listen here: www.alphalist.com/podcast/66-dr-thanasis-noulas-vp-engineering-trade-republic

Find out how to ship meaningful products 👍 on time ⌛ with proper product shaping in this CTO podcast with Ryan Singer, the creator of the Shape Up Method 💪. The Shape Up Method aims to better define and prioritise 🤔 projects before they are sent to be built and shipped. Listen to find out: - How to timebox effectively 📅 (SPOILER: Its not 2 or 6 weeks) - Why tickets don’t work 🎫 - What is the ideal team composition 🎨 for each phase of the project. + Why he doesn’t give specific instructions for the build phase 🏗️ (because everyone does their own thing anyway 🙃) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/65-ryan-singer-creator-of-the-shape-up-method

Find out how to build a profitable mobile app or game 📱in this CTO podcast featuring Carlo Szelinsky, Co-CEO & Founder @ applike group. The applike group brings in $100M+ ARR through their apps and games and now also offers tech solutions for app creators. Listen to this podcast for a step by-step-guide to mobile apps: from performance marketing attribution to in-app analytics technology and everything you need to know about monetizing your app. Listen to find out: - How to do attribution 🧐 well in 2023 (and how to deal with click🖱️ fraud) - The pros and cons of ad network mediation platforms 🧑‍⚖️ - The different ways to monetize a mobile game 🎮 - What tech stack he recommends for each app type. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/64-carlo-szelinsky-co-ceo-founder-applike-group

Discover the technology behind a service that delivers groceries within two hours ⏳ in this CTO podcast featuring Aron Spohr, CTO @ Flaschenpost - a grocery delivery service. 🍏🍞🥚🥫 Listen to find out: - Why boring 🥱 is good in a tech stack (SPOILER: They run their ecommerce 🛒 site in .NET and C# ) - Why they went with a hybrid approach (web container + native SPA) to apps - Why they now buy before they build 🛠️ + How he hacked Deutsche Telekom 📶 at age 16

Get insight into the world of reinforcement learning in this CTO podcast with Maria Meier CTO @ Phantasma Labs (a Simulation-a-a-Service). Maria shares with us how the simulation industry🔮 is developing - particularly in the autonomous vehicle context. Listen to find out: - Why reinforcement learning 🍭 is about to catch up to the other 2 ML paradigms - Why we need to model diversity in AI 👩‍🦽👴🧒🌍 - especially when simulating urban pedestrian traffic. - How much progress the autonomous vehicle industry 🚘 has made towards Level 5. - How standardisation 📜 is unfolding in ML Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/62-maria-meier-cto-phantasma-labs

Come to a new appreciation of the code that powers most of the hardware you interact with in this CTO podcast featuring Bjarne Stroustrup - Creator of C++. Join us as we discuss the past, present, and future of C++ - a language used in everything from ATMs 🏧 to rocketships 🚀. Listen to find out: - Why we need to differentiate between coding 👨‍💻 and programming ⚒️ - Why he doesn’t want to start C++ from scratch ❇️ - The challenges of maintaining 🏗️ a language used by millions of people - How C++ 💪 trumps other languages in efficiency Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/61-bjarne-stroustrup-creator-of-c-plus-plus

Discover new ways to think about ethical engineering 😇 and technical architecture 🏗️in this CTO podcast featuring Yonatan Zunger, Creator of WXZ Layers of System Approach and Distinguished Engineer at Twitter. This is your opportunity to hear from someone whose architectural philosophy is inspiring companies like Github. Listen to find out: >> How to build a multi-layer 🍰 architecture (WXZ) that gives a reliable way to test ideas out. >> Why we need to consider ethics and privacy in everything from UI 🖱️ to AI 🤖 >> What the IC track 🧑‍💻looks like (titles and roles) >> What 4 skills 🧠 every project needs Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/60-yonatan-zunger-creator-of-the-wxz-layers-of-the-system-approach

Find out how to be more efficient by using a mix of no-code, low-code and hard-code in your tech stack in this practical CTO podcast episode featuring Andreas Wixler, the CTO of FINN 🚙. Listen to find out: >> When, why and how to migrate ➡️ your core business code from no-code to hard-code >> How to test and document an API-first set up >> How to get the entire company automating ⚙️ processes in no-code >> How to navigate no-code and low-code limits ⚠️ Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/59-andreas-wixler-cto-finn

Get clarity on how to build great software in 2022 in a world exploding with methodologies and languages with the legendary software craftsman Uncle Bob Martin. The Clean Coder ✨is known for Test Driven Development ✅ and his contribution to SOLID 🧰 and the Agile Manifesto 📜 and he is here to share how to incorporate it into a professional setup. Listen to find out: - How to do Technical Debt ⚖️ the right way. - Why your hiring 📜 should be language-agnostic 💬 - Why pair programming 🤼🏻 is better than code reviews - How Agile 🎛️ came about + the 🔮 Future of Software With over 60 years of experience and many books and courses under his belt - this is the technical architecture overview you have been waiting for. With over 60 years of experience and many books and courses under his belt - this is the architecture overview you have been waiting for. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/58-uncle-bob-martin-the-clean-coder-behind-test-driven-development-solid-principles-and-the-agile-manifesto

Find out what it takes to enable developer productivity in a highly autonomous environment 💪 like Netflix where there are no rules ✌️- only trust and accountability 🫵. Kathryn Koehler, Director of Developer Productivity Engineering @ Netflix shares insight into lean teams, internal tooling, and yes, developer productivity. Listen to find out: - How to decide between Build 🛠vs Buy 🛒 in internal tooling - How to measure 📏developer productivity (SPACE vs NPS vs DORA) - How to support developer’s choice in language 💬(context vs. control) - Why the ideal team 👥 size is n-1 - + Why she never says she is ‘busy’ 🤹 Netflix is known for its unconventional fast-paced culture - so get ready for a wild ride.

Learn how to be the CTO that everyone wants to work for by listening to this talk by Ken Coleman. Known as America’s Career Coach, this Ramsey Personality is also the bestselling author of books like ‘From Paycheck to Purpose’, ‘Proximity Principle’, and more. Discover the winning recipe you need to attract and retain talent in today’s market from someone who has spoken to over 5000 people live-on-air who are looking to leave or join leaders. Plus, find out how to hone your servant-leadership skills by asking your team the right questions, balancing patience and progress, and choosing the right mentor. Listen to find out: - What are the 6 Rules of Engagement that will help you retain 🧲(and attract) talent in today’s market - The difference between Purpose 🧭, Vision 🔭 and Mission and how to use them to create a future-proof company. - What is the secret to leading successful autonomous and remote teams? - How to attract the right talent with a winning job description. This is a golden talk for technical leaders looking to up their game. Listen Here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/56-ken-coleman-americas-career-coach

Find out how to maintain developer productivity 🧑‍💻 in a fast scaling team in this CTO podcast featuring Rachel Potvin, VP Engineering at GitHub (formerly of Google and Ubisoft). She shares how GitHub uses things like fan-out processes, design reviews, and DevSat surveys to stay on track even as the team 3Xed💥. Listen to find out: - Why you should focus on team 👥 productivity metrics (+which ones) - How they are using the ‘Layers of the System’ 🍔 approach to work out GitHub’s future architecture 🏛️ (SPOILER: It might not be entirely monolithic forever) - How they prioritised build 🏗️ queues to minimise context switching Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/55-rachel-potvin-vp-engineering-at-github

Cal Henderson, CTO of Slack, creator of Flickr, and author of ‘Building Scalable Websites’ (O'Reilly Media, 2006) shares how Slack was built from both a tech and product perspective and what you should be doing to reclaim your focus time ⏱️. You don’t want to miss out on hearing about the Slack tech stack from someone who is a pioneer in the use of web APIs and created the basis for OAuth and oEmbed. Listen to find out: >> How Slack does focus time >> What tech stack👩‍💻 powers Slack across platforms >> Why Twitter 🐦 has allowed for better products to be created + why you need to disconnect to produce Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/54-cal-henderson-cto-slack

Find out what is new in the world of cybersecurity in this CTO podcast featuring cybersecurity expert Mikko Hypponen, the originator of Hypponen's Law (if it's smart📲, it's vulnerable😨) and Europol 🇪🇺 board member. Tune in to hear what he has to say as an expert with more than 30 years of experience in protecting users’ cyber security and privacy. Listen to find out: - Why you should see open source vulnerabilities as a supply chain problem (and why it's your job to contribute an audit 🧐). - How Bitcoin makes a great quantum-proof encryption 🔏 solution. - Should we be scared of AI-aided cyberattacks? 🏴󠁢󠁯󠁴󠁿🤖 + Cybersecurity and the Russian🇷🇺/Ukrainian🇺🇦 conflict Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/53-mikko-hypponen-chief-research-officer-withsecure

I spoke with Oren Etzioni - CEO of Allen Institute for AI (a leading AI research institute). Get an insight into what's new in the world of AI from the person whose company's incubated startups worth $300 million+ and released a number of AI tools and technologies. Listen to find out: >> How to get the scientists 🧪 and engineers 🔧on your team to work together>> >> What opportunities await you 🦸 in the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence? >> What is going to be the next big thing in the world of AI🧠, computer vision👁️ and NLP👄? + Is AI good or bad? 🤔 Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/52-oren-etzioni-ceo-of-allen-institute-for-ai

Eben Upton, Co-founder & CEO of Raspberry Pi Ltd (which produces low-cost, high-performance Raspberry Pi single-board computers and microcontrollers for kids - and adults) shares what it’s like to build hardware that makes computing accessible to more people (Did you know that some components are camera shy 📸??). In the past decade, they have made 45 million Raspberry Pis while improving on the original’s performance 40X!!! Learn top tips about building great hardware (it is called hard for a reason) and why you need 10 domain experts, $1 million dollars, and a risk appetite to ⚙️ power the creations of millions of people. Listen to find out: - Why technical leaders with multiple demands on their time should stay away from the code 👩‍💻 - Why do they no longer manufacture hardware in the Far East 🌏 - What will outdated semi-conductor manufacturing facilities 🏭 be used for? - How they are handling the supply chain disruptions 🚢 and the conflict in Eastern Europe (e.g. bot scalping, rerouting, prioritization). P.S. If you like gambling - try the semi-conductor industry.

Niilo Säämänen, CTO of Wolt (best known for their delivery platform) ⚡, shares how he leads an engineering organisation of 40+ autonomous product teams through hyper-growth to serve millions of customers across 23 countries 🚀. Learn how to structure your team and product across domains, platforms, and countries while putting employee satisfaction at the forefront of your work ⭐. You’re bound to learn a thing or two from his unique approach to building impact-driven tech organisations built on autonomy, ownership and accountability 💪. Listen to find out: - How to build & maintain a company culture 🤗 in a hyper-growth company - Why autonomous teams allow you to attract and retain the most talented 🏆 engineers - How to measure engineering performance (hint: engineer satisfaction is more important than you think) - Why they use semi-annual tiered team-owned roadmaps at Wolt (and their process ⚙️ for creating them) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/50-niilo-saamanen-cto-at-wolt

Mike Perham, the creator of Sidekiq 🦵🏼 (a background job managers for Ruby) shares how he commercialised the open-source as a solopreneur doing what he loves 💙 without the costs & management headaches 🤦 of a team or the pressures of a VC investment. Discover tips for building sustainable software (e.g. minimise dependencies) and choosing the right business model that enables you to support and maintain your software for years to come. Listen to find out:: -How to get to $4M ARR with 20% YoY growth by creating a helpful add-on ➕ to a popular open-source framework (i.e. Rails). -Why you should avoid dependencies originating from a 💸VC-backed company or non-commercialized OS project -Why you activate a ticking time-bomb 💣 when you get VC funding (better to bootstrap and get the revenue without the pressure) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/49-mike-perham-creator-of-sidekiq-faktory

Michael Kagan, the CTO of computing giant Nvidia and co-founder of Mellanox shares insight into the world of hardware, software, AI, and of course computing. Listen to find out: - Why you should ditch deep hierarchy and allow those close to the product to make the decisions. 🧑‍⚖️ - The benefits of working with inexperienced engineers 🐤 - How to retain employees by hiring them every day 😃. + Why instead of fighting for a bigger slice of pie 🍰 - we should just bake a bigger pie Listen Here- https://alphalist.com/podcast/48-michael-kagan-cto-at-nvidia

I spoke with Daniel Krauss, the Chief Organisational Plumber at FlixBus - a leading Mobility-as-a-Service 🚍🚆. Learn how to grow a company from a ‘fastest-shippable-product monolith’🙃 to a neat ‘independent service’ architecture 😀 with ‘Team Self Design’ events, empowered teams & domain-orientated org structure. Listen to find out: - How to push technological innovation in a highly-regulated industry⛔ (and its limits). - How to adapt your tech architecture and organizational structure of your product as you scale ⇗ - Why you should never compromise on hiring the best 💪 engineers. + How he chose FlixBus tech stack

Taylor Otwell, CEO, and Creator of Laravel (a popular PHP framework) - gives tips on how to commercialize an open-source by sharing his winning recipe of a lean team, great UX/UI, time management, product management, and of course, commercial products. He also gives insight into the use of the various frameworks for full-stack engineering (SPOILER ALERT: Full-stack bootcamps should be teaching more than Javascript). Listen to find out:: - How to get to 6M$ ARR starting with an open-source project (HINT: It’s not through sponsored repositories) - Why to build a SaaS with a single full-stack engineer 🦸 you need to abandon Javascript - Why it's better to follow product vision 🧭 and ROI when building features rather than detractors' requests. - What goes on behind the scenes 🛠️ at Laravel (product management, team structure, async etc.) + A day in the life ⏰ of Taylor Otwell

David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of Basecamp and Hey and creator of Ruby-on-Rails💎 blows us away yet again in this thought-provoking podcast about bootstrapping, scaling, remote work, and of course Ruby on Rails. Learn insights into technical leadership from someone who has been leading a remote team since 2004 (hint: You are doing Slack and Zoom wrong), believes in async work, and loves the fact that his company doesn’t have an office 🏢. Plus, after 20 years of creating multi-million dollar SaaS products - he just made his first middle management hire!! 🤯 Listen to find out: - Product discovery: Why he rather ships a product instead of doing discovery with Figma prototypes. There is no stronger confirmation than a user that pays for your product - Why they capped Basecamps size to 60 for a long time 🧑‍💼and discontinued a lot of products to fully focus - How he would bootstrap a startup in 2022 🚀 (e.g. SaaS, remote, small team, nodecode vs. handcrafted software). - Why he doesn’t work on Ruby on Rails👨‍💻 full time and why he thinks it’s good for the framework that it’s not commercial at all - How Rails 7 brings back developer productivity + pushes UX to the next level WITHOUT a lot of Javascript (No SPA inside!) with Hotwire + His favorite productivity tip? He cut down Twitter by 97% Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/45-david-heinemeier-hansson-ruby-on-rails-creator-and-cto-at-basecamp-and-hey

Laura Major - CTO at motional (an autonomous vehicle company 🚗) and author of the book ‘What To Expect When You Are Expecting Robots’🤖 - talks about what it takes to build a commercially-viable SAE Level 4 self-driving vehicle 🚘. The motional team has been working with Hyundai and Lyft to get robotaxis on the streets of Las Vegas by 2023. You don't want to miss this inside scoop on the AV industry from a robotics expert with a background in the aerospace industry🚀. Listen to find out: -What goes into making AVs: sensing, data processing, testing, maintenance and more. -Why they released their NuPlan dataset as a virtual driving test for AVs -What its like competing in the autonomous vehicle industry. -How to manage your time ⌚ as a CTO + How she deals with the (unfortunate) challenges inherent in being a #WomenInTech 👩‍💻

Our next guest has a serious need for ⚡ speed ⚡! I spoke with Ilya Grigorik, Principal Engineer at Shopify, founder and former CTO of PostRank (acquired by Google), former co-chair of W3C Web Performance working group. Learn how to optimize your website for speed 💨 with tips from the web performance engineer who worked on Google’s ‘Make Web Faster’ team (y’know, the one that brought you Core Web Vitals and Page Speed Insights). Listen to find out: - Why every CTO needs how mobile networks operate 📲 before building anything mobile. - How to use perceptual latency 👁️ to your advantage - What features you should be using to #MakeTheWebFaster ⏩ - How Shopify is pivoting to serve developers with its new Hydrogen and Oxygen frameworks. + Why headless eCommerce isn’t actually head-less - it's got many heads (omnichannel). Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/43-ilya-grigorik-principal-engineer-at-shopify

I spoke with Frédéric Rivain, CTO at Dashlane, a password management 🔐 solution. Learn about the future of passwords, why they are focussing on browsers instead of platforms, and how ‘half-baked agile’ works at Dashlane. Listen to find out: -Why they are moving towards browser-centric delivery (away from OS 🖥️) The impact of ManifestV3 on the extensions 🧩 community. -Why the future🔮 won’t be entirely passwordless -How they minimize the impact of breaches with their zero-knowledge📦 approach to engineering + How they structure their teams👥�, processes📕 and OKRs ✔️ at Dashlane. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/42-frederic-rivain-cto-of-dashlane

I spoke with Snir Yarom, CTO at Codility,🧑‍💻 - a leading technical assessment platform - about data-driven technical recruiting 💼, the typical hiring process and how to attract talent in a competitive market. Listen to find out: - How to use data 📊 to optimise each stage of your technical recruiting pipeline (e.g. sourcing, screening, interviews, assessment etc.) - How to lead different tech teams across cultural divides 🇹🇭 🇮🇱 🇩🇪 (e.g. confrontational vs. non-confrontational culture). - Why ‘Meeting the Team’ 🤝 is a key step in the hiring process. + The best sources of engineers (by conversion rate). Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/41-snir-yarom-cto-codility

I spoke with Marco Palladino, Co-Founder & CTO at Kong 🐒, the market-leading API Manageent Gateway Solution. Learn deep insight into APIs, the future of the API Economy, and what it takes to build a great API from someone who has been involved in the API industry since its infancy. Listen to find out: - How to build an API for each use case (external, microservice & mobile). - Why it's only the beginning of the API economy 💹 - Why the best infrastructure software has its roots in the open-source ☸️. - How he managed to commercialise💸 an open-source project without alienating its community 👥 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/40-marco-palladino-cto-kong

Chad Fowler -  an engineer, musician, and author  -   transformed Wunderlist 📋 from a messy monolith to a neat multi-language microservice. Be inspired by his unique view on technology stemming from his background as a  musician 🎵 and RPG player 🎮.  Open your mind 🤯and prepare to reevaluate 🤔after you hear from this creative thinker who -in the course of his 25-year career -  has worked as both a coder and manager at both startups and enterprise companies in the US 🇺🇸, EU 🇪🇺 and India 🇮🇳.  Listen to find out: - Why we should rethink how computer science is taught 🎓 to get better coders 🧑‍💻 - Why and how he used multiple languages in his microservice architecture 🖇️ - Why startups 🚀should wait before adopting a named methodology (e.g. Agile, scrum, kanban, OKR) - Unique applications of concepts touted in the decentralized Web 3️.0 🔮 Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/39-chad-fowler-cto-musician-author-and-vc

I spoke with Sagnik Nandy, CTO & President of Technology at Okta, the market leading IAM Solution 🔐. Discover deep insight into the world of identity management🆔, user feedback 👥, and why the best products provide a simplified interface to a complex solution (with customizability ⚙️ for advanced users). Don’t miss out on this opportunity to hear how to build scalable products ♾️ from someone who scaled and led Google Analytics 📊 and Google Ad 💸 products/ Listen to find out: -Why you need to build for both expansion 📈 and deprecation 📉 -The need for a passwordless future 🔏 -The challenges of integrations ☮️ (Okta integrates with 7000+ services) -How to Scale Excellence 👍 + the importance of mentorship 🧑‍🏫 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/38-sagnik-nandy-cto-okta

I spoke with Fabian Wesner, Founder at ROQ, a FaaS (Feature-as-a-Service) for web applications. Learn deep insight into the world of web applications and frameworks from someone who had to launch an eCommerce shop each week (in different countries 🇧🇷 🇦🇺 🇯🇵 and industries!👗🛏️🧸). Fabian, as former Rocket Internet CTO and Spryker Co-Founder and CTO is the hidden gem of the German CTO scene. Listen to find out: - How working in the “Samwer sweatshop” felt - Node vs Ruby vs PHP for a modern web app - Why “keeping your stack lean” is important and how he approaches architecture - What it takes to build a eCommerce shop system 🛒 (he built 3!) - The science 🧬 behind building a new FaaS (Feature-as-a-Service) - Tips into the 👁️ Lost Art of Database Schema Visualisation Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/37-fabian-wesner-founder-roq

I spoke with Kore Nordemann, CTO at Frontastic, a Frontend-as-a-Service for headless CMS and commerce systems. Learn deep insight into what it takes to build a web app today: from choosing a stack to hiring frontend/backend/full-stack developers. Listen to find out: - Which ECommerce 🛒 features are Amazon’s Achilles Heel - Why Pair Programming 🧑‍ 💻‍🧑 works better than Pull Request Reviews - The pros and cons of Stateful/Stateless, Docker, PHP, CouchDB 🛋️ and more - Why microservices are probably not for you (yet integrated services are). + Plus the design features 🗺️ of the Frontastic Virtual Office that you might want to implement for your remote office.

I spoke with Alesia Braga, CTO at SmartRecruiters, an end-to-end recruiting solution. She shares with us insights into the recruiting world, how to improve diversity and what she does to shorten the recruiting cycle time to avoid losing top candidates She also shares with us: - Why she uses a literal scorecard 💯 for each candidate she interviews - How she juggles 🤹 product and tech in the CTO role - The challenges of balancing enterprise use 🏭 with superior end user experience

I spoke with Mark Porter, CTO at MongoDB. His 40-year career spans time working at companies like Oracle, AWS, and Grab. He shares with us insights into technical leadership, company culture, and the open-source world, Listen to find out -Where DEI initiatives fail〽️ -Why they don’t use OKRs 📏 at MongoDB -How to Build A product around the Open Source 👥 +How being a parent makes him a better manager

I spoke with Andreas Schranzhofer, CTO of Scalable Capital about the best ways to secure an app. Scalable Capital is a Neo-Broker and robo-advisor based in Munich with over 250 million in funding. Learn about app security from someone highly experienced in running an app in the highly regulated FinTech 💰 industry. Learn: - Why you need both security and obfuscation 🛡️ - How to prevent Supply Chain and Ransomware attacks 🦹‍🤑 - What external tools he uses in the Software Development Cycle 🛠️

I spoke with Charity Majors, CTO of HoneyComb, a prolific Twitter user, and blogger. WHO TESTS IN PRODUCTION. 😱 And is proud of it. She also shares her insight into socio-technical leadership, observability, and databases. Learn: The importance of a tight feedback loop 🔁 Why the maximum deploy time should be 15 minutes. 🕒🚀 How microservices make engineers job harder😓 Why she wants to do away with hierarchies to increase job satisfaction 😀

Alex Solomon of PagerDuty is working on making the DevOps world more efficient with on-call-management, AIOps, and automating routine debugging tasks. He shares with us about: - On-Call Management: The only notifications that provide a better Work/Life Balance - How AIOps and Runbook Automation are the future of DevOps (+other trends) - Partner vs Compete: Why they became an ecosystem - How he grew his B2B Saas Startup

We spoke with Cheryl Hung of Cloud Native. She runs the ecosystem of over 600 members contributing to over a hundred open source projects. She also started the Cloud Native London meetup where she promotes developer advocacy and diversity. As an early adopter of kubernetes, she has a lot to share! Cheryl shared with us: - The importance of Developer Advocacy 👩‍💻 - How Edge Computing is the next frontier in Cloud Native ☁️ - Why kubernetes is not for everyone 📦and has to become easier - Why End-User companies should contribute to the Open Source 🆓 + Her childhood dream of becoming a Google Engineer and where she is holding with it! Join us in welcoming our First Female Guest.. and send us more because we are missing out!

We spoke to Matthias Jugel, the co-founder of ubirch, the company behind the 🇩🇪 German digital vaccination passes 💉His technology has generated over 30 million vaccine passes giving German their summer holidays back! And they launched in a matter of weeks! We discussed what was involved in creating digital vaccine passports that worked OFFLINE and allow movement around the EU 🇪🇺; Blockchain verification ✔️ and its applications in pharmaceuticals⚕️, car insurance 🚘and manufacturing 🏭 and what he learnt from launching a national program in a month! 📆

We spoke to Rasmus Rothe, leader in AI space- he has 5 products just based on machine learning. - What is involved in productising and commercialising a machine learning-based service 📈➡️💰 - The need for ML ops 👨‍💻 - Google Cloud vs AWS vs Azure and why he doesn’t stick to one ☁️ - AI and its applications in medical field ⚕️, autonomous driving 🚘and BI 📊 + His go-to resources for libraries, ML ops and conferences BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Fastly(http://www.fastly.com/alphalist) and Sastrify (http://www.sastrify.com/alphalist)

I had the chance to talk to Eric Johnson, the CTO of GitLab about - How to manage remote teams: async, stand-ups, onboarding, burn out, internships, compensation, and more - How Gitlab uses git for everything from Marketing to Policy - The difference between servant-leadership and situational leadership and when to use what + A message to those who think parenthood :children_crossing:might take away from their career If you loved his straight-talking ReadMe about himself, you will also like this thought-provoking episode on leadership, management, and of course remote work from someone who manages a completely remote team of 560, in a company of 1300+

This Podcast episode is DOOMed 🔥🌋😈🧟🕯👿☠👹🦹 I had the chance to talk to John Romero, the inventor of DOOM, Wolfenstein and Commander Keen and founder of id Software about * Developing games in the early 90s and how they developed DOOM in a crazy small team * Developing games in 2021 and how it’s still possible to develop games with only a single person team * The crazy amounts of money they made with DOOM 🤑💶🤑 * The crazy amounts of energy drinks they consumed * Why not he would not start developing a game engine again Thanks a lot John! Was really fun talking to you.

Today with me in the Podcast is Tim O'Reilly, the Founder & CEO of O'Reilly Media and boy, his 1,5 million twitter followers are there for a reason! People call him "the Oracle of the Silicon Valley", he came up with the term "Web 2.0" - This man is crazy a wizard! We spoke about: * Writing as superpower! How it helps you to structure your thoughts. * How he started OSCON and great nerdy 90s * The big tectonic "Platform changes" and how the giants use "Algorithmic Rents" to silently put more money into their pockets * The wrong incentives and optimization functions of our economy and how to change it * How we are part of "the machine" and "the machine" needs us to decide what is good ("ham") and what is bad ("spam") Brilliant thoughts! Thank you so much Tim!

In this episode we dive deep into the principles of Blockchain together with Peter Grosskopf who is our guest for the 2nd time. Peter recently quit his job as CTO @ Börse Stuttgart to fully focus on building a decentralized bank in the DeFi (Decentralize finance) space. We spoke about: * How does a blockchain work * Why to use blockchains * Concrete use-cases and applications * How ether works and how to get started

This time I had Olivier Bonnet, the CTO of BlaBlaCar in the podcast. BlaBlaCar is the carpooling company: They own the market. They are active in 22 Countries, have 100M+ Users and acquired 12 other carpooling companies. Olivier, the CTO, joined me to talk about: * How his time at  Apple taught him to think long term * 100 million users, 12 acquisitions: The strategy behind BlaCar * The complexity of route planning 🌐 * How writing 🖊️ helps people at Bla to structure their thoughts: They are writing press releases for new features, Amazon style. * You build it, you run it! How technology decision discipline works at BlaCar Was a great ride with you, Olivier! We both turned out to be a bit more Bla ;-) in this episode than we initially thought.

How to make a living from Open Source? My guest Frank Karlitschek, the CEO of ☁️☁️ NextCloud ☁️☁️ the open alternative to Google Cloud and Microsofts Office 365 (!) does it for years and tells us where to start. He knows the game! **Other topics we touch?** - The 3 Ultimate tipps for open source developers/publishers How he leads his team of 50+ FTE almost fully remote - How GDPR can be seen as a chance for European entrepreneurs - How he built his company without any VC money Thanks a lot Frank for being my guest!

In this episode I talk to Jason Warner, Github CTO aka "the PaaS Guru". He used to work for Heroku before and explained what he's planning and executing at Github and how Github uses it's massive amount of data to go away from pure repo-hosting. Topics that stand out: * How microsoft is working out quite well for them (Careful: contains Steve Balmer rants) * How Github will revolutionize the Platform as a Service world (PaaS) * His thoughts about developer productivity and the broken idea of measuring an individual engineers performance 📈📈📈 * How he breaks down the organization strategy from into mission, vision, priorities, goals, and tasks to get everyone aligned He also reveals his past as 🏋️ Fitness Guru, having written multiple fitness books and what happened when a colleague found that out...

This time I spoke to John Graham-Cumming, the CTO of 🌩 Cloudflare🌩, a publicly listed CDN and Edge Computing platform. Topics we touched: * His GNU Make book ;-) * How they grew to 25 BN marketcap 📈 * What he thinks about edge computing and concrete usecases for it * How COVID changed the 🥷 security world 🥷 * How they operate and maintain a global network with millions of servers Thanks a lot John for the Chat. Looking forward to see what Cloudflare comes up with next.

This time I'm talking to an absolute legend: Mitchell Hashimoto, the CTO of HashiCorp the company behind a series of brilliant open source products (Terraform, Vault, Nomad, Vagrant) that are highly successfully both business wise and community wise. I would even argue that HashiCorp is the only company that manages to do that. We talk about: * The path from 7 to 1000+ employees in the last 10 years 📈📈📈 * How Mitch is still able to be a very active github user and contribute a lot of code while growing a big enterprise company to IPO * How to build successful open source projects * Where to draw the line in open core businesses * How to be able to prevent cloud providers from sucking your blood 🧛

Podcast time! In this episode I'm chatting with Jean-Denis Greze, the Head of Engineering @ Plaid and former Director of Engineering at Dropbox. Plaid is a fintech Unicorn from the US that just turned down an acquisition by Visa. We spoke about: * The upcoming topic 🔒 Privacy Engineering 🔒 and how it will change our thinking * How plaid handles 1000s of connections to banks and integrates with a lot of legacy APIs just fine * His thoughts around Defi and Blockchain * How they do good business in fintech without touching any money 💰 It was great having you, Jean-Denis!

This time in the podcast I have a very bright guest I admire for years: Eric Bowman, SVP Engineering at TomTom, Former VP Engineering at Zalando AND one of the developers behind the game "The Sims" 🧍‍♂️ He is a brilliant mind when it comes to tech leadership and has strong opinions on autonomy and empowerment. Topics we touched: * How 90s gaming development compares to 20s large scale tech teams * What TomTom does these days and the technical challenges in location based services & mapping these days * How to establish tech culture and open source in a large enterprise * The challenges of the automotive industry in a software world 🚗 * 📈 The importances of the accelerate KPIs in modern engineering orgs and how to move fast 📈 It was a pleasure talking to you, Eric!

This time, I have a very technical podcast on Webassembly and the new kid on the block: the Edge Cloud with Fastly's CTO Tyler McMullen, one of the leading CDNs and edge cloud companies out there. * The future of distributed computation: From Serverless to ☁️ Cloudless ☁️ * Webassembly as the new industry standard intermediate representation/micro container. And guess what? Your browser most likely already supports it! * How a CDN works internally and the challenges of building it * How he manages to still be a coding geek in 💰💰💰 10BN company This podcast was actually recorded shortly before Covid - if you wonder how we could meet up in Berlin ;-)

This time I had Jean Michel Lemieux or short JML, the CTO of 🛒 Shopify 🛒 in the podcast. Craziest fact: He took the time two days before black Friday 💥. In the podcast he also told me why. We spoke about: * His fight against crazy 👟 sneaker - sniping - bots and how Shopify keeps people in line happy with games * What it takes to run the largest Ruby on Rails (majestic ;-)) monolith on the planet * Why he does not believe in microservice architecture but still runs some services * How he keeps his 2000 engineer army 🪖 aligned * Why he still sells stuff for kids online through his own platform It was crazy fun, even if I missed the swearing after David Heinemeier Hansson took that route.

In this episode I am thrilled to welcome David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of Basecamp, inventor of Ruby on Rails, founder of Hey.com, book author of books like "Remote" or "It does not have to be crazy at work". Some topics we touched: * How David Discovered the magic of Ruby 💎 * How he finds moments of deep flow in programming and racing * Why Smartwatches are a gift from hell⌚ * Why the 60 hour work week is a stupid lie * Why he would immediately quit if he was hired as CTO of Zalando 👚 * How they successfully manage Basecamp, and why "the Spotify Model" is a myth ☠️ Strong language, be careful ☠️ And: You might notice that I had to laugh at least 60% of the time. Thanks David for your time and this great episode.

Podcast time! This time I have the chance to talk to the judo brown belt owning CTO of the scooter& mobility startup TIER mobility Matthias Laug. Before TIER he co-founded Lieferando and boy, he's a nice guest to talk to. We spoke about: * Why he puts people over tech * What they use to run their large IoT stack * His vision of Scooters talking to each other in a huge mesh * Why he after founding Lieferando and having a large exit still started at Thoughtworks * When to not do backflips even if you perfected doing them He also briefly mentions Eric Bowman, Martin Fowler and Pat Kua who have one thing in common: I did not interview them for the alphalist podcast - Would be happy to chat with you guys too! :)

This time I am talking to my friend Johannes Schaback, CTO of Home24, who is also originally a co-founder of alphalist and one of the brightest minds in the German engineering, tech and business-tech scene. We are talking about his journey through the AI and data world, the Do's and Don'ts and the real world, no bullshit application of machine learning. We are Tackle: * Data is the new oil - wrong or right? * The machine learning models @ Home24 * How ML-infrastructure evolved in the last decade * The necessity to spend more time in the problem space before entering the solution space We talk about mentorship and great people he learned from (*ping* Marc Appelhoff, Brigitte Wittekind, Christian Weiss, Philipp Kreibohm ;-)). Thanks a lot Johannes and looking forward to track your successes at Home24, your career and investments.

In this podcast, it's all about complicated things and my guest masters them all: IoT, Robotics, AI and customer acquisition. Ahti Heinla is former founding engineer of Skype and now runs Starship Technologies as Founder and CTO. In this podcast we talk about * Robotics as the coolest thing to build as an engineer * How I stopped one of his Robots in Hamburg * The hard things about robots 🤖 * The hard things about bringing ML models to production Thanks again Ahti for being my guest and looking forward to see more and more of your robots in the wild. Great to see so much innovation coming from Estonia. Looking forward to feedback and guest proposals.

Wow, my guest this time is able to see through the matrix 💊: It's Marty Cagan, inventor of product discovery and best selling author of the book "INSPIRED", one of the partners of the Silicon Valley Product Group and potentially the biggest eye opener for 90% of the delivery organizations out there: We are most likely doing our job wrong! He saw so much different product and delivery orgs from Apple to Google to Spotify and talks about his learnings: * How agile is interpreted wrong in 90% of the companies * How modern organizations waste their resources * How to tackle product discovery and user testing * Autonomy vs. Empowerment Thanks Marty, it's been a blast!

It's podcast-time! This time, I spoke to Christian Hardenberg, CTO of Delivery Hero 🍔 and formerly Rocket Internet 🚀 on how to scale an engineering org from 200 to 2000 people. Delivery Hero just entered the DAX a week ago and is worth almost 20 BN as of today. He shared his perspective and thoughts on: * How to measure software developers at scale * How they keep up the pace / velocity * What he thinks about OKRs * How they manage to integrate all the acquired entities and teams * Their secret sauce and why he thinks it is better thanGoogle

This time, I have the honor to talk to Peter Grosskopf, CTO of Börse Stuttgart digital exchange and former CTO of Solarisbank. He's an amazing guy for philosophical discussions around finance, tech and we share one love that is no longer as cool as it was in the 00's: Ruby on rails! This time we discuss: * How he made regulations his hobby 👓 and wants developers to feel like working for Spotify or Soundcloud even with regulations in place * The do's and don'ts in Fintech * Why he rather picks mature stacks (aka Postgres and Ruby on rails) against the "new kids on the block" * How he thinks about new things tech like Apache Kafka Thanks again for being my guest, it was a lot of fun.

I had the chance to interview Sergei Anikin about how to scale a SaaS product. Sergei Anikin comes with vast experience in “large scale tech” as he was with Skype when it was sold 3 times (eBay, Private Equity, Microsoft) and is CTO at 90-million funded pipedrive (CRM SaaS) now. Laser sharp focus on the essential features “Scaling problems are good problems to have” Microservices vs. Monoliths Team structure at scale: Missions and tribes (https://medium.com/pipedrive-engineering/scaling-pipedrive-engineering-from-teams-to-tribes-8f14fd92df8c) How they do M&A and post merger integration It was an honor to talk to Sergei Anikin and see him joining alphalist as a new member too. Looking forward to your comments, feedback and guest proposals.

I had to deal with cybersecurity topics recently; I've even been in touch with the FBI 👮. On this occasion I invited a brilliant guest for the alphalist Podcast: It’s Mikko Hyppönen, a computer security specialist and scientific director at the security company F-Secure. He spent half of his life hacking and chasing hackers and he knows how to talk about it: I saw at least 3 TED Talks by him and yes, they are very entertaining and helpful. Key topics in the Podcast are: - The recent twitter hack and the stupidness of the hackers - How cybersecurity evolved and became a required skill for companies and countries - His recommendations for modern mid sized companies around Cybersecurity (Where to start with processes, recruiting, tools, budgets) - What to do if you’ve been compromised You won’t regret that you've listened :-)

I am thrilled to announce this weeks podcast guest: Prof. Sebastian Thrun Brief overview: He is a Stanford professor, founder of Google X, built the first self driving car, won the Darpa-Award for it, started the online-academy Udacity and is now building autonomous planes at Kitty Hawk. Wow. Can you tell why I highly admire him and how excited I was when I won him for my podcast? We talked about the car nation in Germany, how competitive we are in the AI and software world, Stanford vs. TU-Munich, why Sebastian is striving for a brain-computer interface, why he has built the leading online university Udacity and how to tackle machine learning as a modern CTO. He also explains why he eventually comes up with a Bluetooth-connected Smart-Bra next.

Tobias talks to Daniel Gebler, the CTO of the “Dutch supermarket unicorn” Picnic about his story from the 4k Demo Scene to operating and growing picnic to a billion Euros marketcap and 5000+ employees. Topics we touch in this episode: - How Picnic works - Why they chose to build an app-only platform - Picnics secret sauce in data science, supply chain and fulfillment - How there business and tech literally exploded with Corona - His thoughts on Microservices And many more! Thanks a lot to Daniel, we had a great time!

In dieser Ausgabe begrüssen wir Jan Ramm, den CTO der FreeNow Gruppe (ehem. MyTaxi). Wir sprechen unter anderem - von seinem Werdegang vom Schulschwimmer zum CTO - wie und wo FreeNow seine Entwickler sucht & findet - wie sich der Mobility Markt entwickelt hat und noch entwickelt - was sein Blick auf Mobile-Frameworks ala Flutter ist. Danke an Jan für das tolle Gespräch.

Stephan Schulze ist bei alphalist Mitglied der ersten Stunde. Als CTO von Project A hat er sehr viele Startup-Technologien von innen sehen - quasi der Mann, der schon alles gesehen hat ;-) Wir sprechen heute aus der Vogelperspektive unter anderem über folgende Themen: Tech in Project A Startups (Frameworks, Tools, Sprachen, Trends & Prozesse), seinen Einfluss als VC auf die Technologie in Project A Startups und natürlich über mein Lieblingsthema, die technical due diligence. Also den Qualitätscheck den er als VC bei allen Startups durchführt.

In der heutigen Folge spreche ich mit Sebastian Betz, dem CO-CEO und CTO von About You über technologische Trends, Frameworks und aktuelle Hypes sowie seinen Job als CTO und wie der Tech Stack von about you unter der Motorhaube aussieht.