Overcommitted | Software Engineering and Programming Insights

What happens when coding becomes nearly free - but everything else in the software delivery process doesn't? Cameron Etezadi, CTO at LaunchDarkly, joins Erika, Brittany, and Bethany to talk about the gap between code that compiles and code that actually works in production. They cover vibe coding pitfalls, the release-observe-iterate loop, how AI is shifting engineers toward frontline manager behaviors, and why speed without control is a liability - not an asset. Cameron also shares how LaunchDarkly changed their intern interview process to reflect the AI era, what EU regulations mean for human accountability in AI-generated code, and why the classic two-pizza team is giving way to something much smaller.

Cameron Etezadi is the CTO at LaunchDarkly and brings experience scaling engineering organizations at Google, HashiCorp, and SAP. He's also a licensed flight instructor with ratings in fixed-wing, seaplane, helicopter, and gyroplane - and has logged over 400 skydives.

Show notes:

• Cameron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronetezadi

• LaunchDarkly: https://launchdarkly.com

• LaunchDarkly leadership page: https://launchdarkly.com/leadership/
• Rainier Flight Service bio: https://www.rainierflightservice.com/rainier-flight-staff/cameron-etezadi

Summary

Brittany's first weeks at Bluesky are reframing everything she thought about coding interviews. Career growth in tech still hinges on algorithm problems, but AI, remote work, and async development have fundamentally changed what actually signals engineering ability. Why do companies cling to LeetCode when software engineers now solve problems in decentralized, AI-augmented teams? We dig into what hiring should measure, why job-hunting feels unsettled, and how women engineers navigate visibility and advancement in the interview process.

Links

• How GitHub Engineers Learn New Codebases blog post: https://github.blog/developer-skills/application-development/how-github-engineers-learn-new-codebases/
• Diataxis: https://diataxis.fr

Hosts

• Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
• Bethany Janos: https://www.trustyduck.dev/
• Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com
• Erika Eggemeyer: https://github.com/eggyhead

Summary

Dennis Pilarinos has spent nearly two decades building developer tools at Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Buddybuild (acquired by Apple). Now CEO of Unblocked, he's tackling the critical problem holding back agentic AI development: context intelligence. Why do AI coding agents keep guessing? Because they lack the organizational and business context behind the code. In this episode, the Overcommitted hosts dig into how developers and AI agents can truly understand the "why" behind codebases, not just the "what"—and why this matters for code quality, productivity, and shipping reliable tools.

Links

• Dennis' email: [email protected]
• Unblocked: https://dub.sh/IeI82Vx
• Dennis on X: https://x.com/dennispilarinos
• Dennis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennispi/

Hosts

• Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
• Bethany Janos: https://github.com/bethanyj28
• Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com
• Erika Eggemeyer: https://github.com/eggyhead

Summary

What does it actually look like to hand 90% of your workday over to an AI agent you built yourself?

Sterling Chin, founding DevRel at Inngest and creator of Marvin, an open-source AI chief of staff with nearly 1,000 GitHub stars, has been doing exactly that for months. In this episode, Sterling joins Brittany to talk through how Marvin works, why he built it, and what he's learned about the real friction points in AI adoption that most people don't talk about.

Sterling came into tech through a coding bootcamp after studying elementary education at BYU, landed at Postman where he led the R&D labs team, went viral on LinkedIn for posts about their AI assistant PostBot, and accidentally became a DevRel engineer because of it. Now at Inngest, he's the founding DevRel hire, and still building in public constantly.

Links

• Sterling's Website: https://sterlingchin.com/
• Sterling's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sterlingchin/
• Sterling on GitHub: https://github.com/SterlingChin
• Sterling on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sterlingchin.bsky.social
• Sterling on Twitter: https://x.com/SilverJaw82
• Marvin: https://github.com/SterlingChin/marvin-template
• Sterling on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SterlingChin
• Sterling on Substack: https://sterlingchin.substack.com/
• Web Dev Challenge Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2sEoZG8EIw&list=PLz8Iz-Fnk_eTkZvSNWXW_TKZ2UwVirT2M&index=17
• Inngest: https://www.inngest.com/
• AI Crimes in Production: https://ai-crimes-in-production.com/

Hosts

• Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
• Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com

AI is generating more code than ever, but most engineers aren't verifying it. Sonar Staff AI Researcher Joe Tyler shares breakthrough findings from his LLM Leaderboard research on code quality, the hidden "coding personalities" of different models, and why the real bottleneck in software engineering isn't writing code: it's securing and reviewing it. Discover the gap between developer distrust and actual verification practices, plus how to position yourself for the verification-first future of software development.

Topics: AI code quality, LLM research, software engineering careers, code verification, developer tools

Show links:

• Sonar LLM Leaderboard: https://www.sonarsource.com/the-coding-personalities-of-leading-llms/leaderboard/
• Sonarqube: https://www.sonarsource.com/products/sonarqube
• Sonarsweep: https://www.sonarsource.com/products/sonarsweep/
• Joe's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-tyler-a668051b1/
• Latent Space: https://www.latent.space/
• Turing Post: https://www.turingpost.com/
• Nathan Lambert: https://substack.com/@natolambert
• Cameron Wolfe: https://substack.com/@cwolferesearch
• Sebastian Raschka: https://substack.com/@rasbt
• Andrew Ng: https://www.andrewng.org/

Summary

Software engineering career moves don't have to be a lottery. In this episode, Adam Argyle breaks down why the technical interview process is fundamentally broken, how design engineering skills actually transfer across roles, and the tactical job search playbook that works today. Whether you're navigating a career pivot, re-entering the market, or just frustrated with the hiring gauntlet, this conversation cuts through the noise on what really matters for career growth and staying sane.

Links

• Adam’s Website: https://nerdy.dev/ 
• Adam’s CascadiaJS 2025 talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW6GECIzvsw 
• 10 powerful ways to use CSS variables article: https://nerdy.dev/custom-prop-categories 
• Sizzle Rizzle: https://nerdy.dev/sizzle-rizzle

Hosts

• Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
• Bethany Janos: https://github.com/bethanyj28
• Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com
• Erika Eggemeyer: https://github.com/eggyhead

Brittany shares her journey building Collective Social - a Goodreads-style app for all kinds of media built entirely on the AT Protocol - and how it led her to create OpenSocial, a service that lets any app on the decentralized web share group functionality like book clubs. The episode covers the challenges of representing groups when the protocol has no native concept of group identity, using conference talk deadlines as motivation to ship side projects, and rating real-world systems on how well they'd work in a decentralized context. Erika also shares her experience building an interpreter in Go.

Show links:

• Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com
• Collective Social: https://collectivesocial.app
• OpenSocial: https://opensocial.community
• Collective Social on GitHub: https://github.com/collectivesocial
• "Representing groups in ATProto" blog post (Brittany's site)
• AtmosphereConf speaker profile: https://news.atmosphereconf.org/3mfpjx5luuc2m
• GitHub Blog - Build a Personal Organization Command Center with GitHub Copilot CLI: https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/github-copilot/build-a-personal-organization-command-center-with-github-copilot-cli/
• "The art of saying yes" blog post: https://brittanyellich.com/say-yes-do-all-the-things/
• "Living in the inflection point" blog post: https://brittanyellich.com/living-in-the-inflection-point/
• Nick Gerakines episode (EP19 - AT Proto, MCP, and Open Source): https://overcommitted.dev/ep-19-at-proto-mcp-and-open-source-with-nick-gerakines
• PDX ATProto talk: https://youtu.be/xFdak3HbDmM?si=rZoPfyYYoP2awADJ&t=2302
• AtmosphereConf talk: https://youtu.be/GVOywon3X-Q?si=yzKLfFNF8bzNT9-e
• The ATProto Store: https://atstore.fyi
• pdsls.dev: https://pdsls.dev
• Atmosphere Community: https://atmosphere.community
• npmx.dev: https://npmx.dev
• Tangled: https://tangled.io
• This is for Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222376492-this-is-for-everyone

Topics: AT Protocol, Decentralized Social Media, Side Projects, Open Source, Software Engineering

Summary

In this episode, Erika talks with Salma Alam-Naylor about software engineering craft, programming best practices, and why the long game beats shortcuts. As AI coding tools proliferate and everyone chases speed, Salma digs into deliberate practice, sustainable career strategies, and building genuine expertise that compounds over time. Perfect for engineers feeling burnout from the hype cycle.

Links

• Salma’s website: https://whitep4nth3r.com/

• 2021 Jamstack Jammies (Community Creator Award) https://2021.jamstackconf.com/jammies/

• Fat bear week website: https://explore.org/fat-bear-week

• Hell.com wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell.com

  
  

Hosts

• Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
• Erika (Eggyhead): https://github.com/eggyhead

Tech careers don't need to mean grinding LeetCode. In episode 57, John Crickett — 30+ year engineer, Coding Challenges creator (90K+ subscribers) — makes the case that programmer productivity skyrockets when you build real tools instead. We dig into why your own Redis, Git, or shell beats practice problems, how Coding Challenges went from $17 domain to viral sensation (1,500 signups in one weekend), and what it means to level up through systems programming.

Links

• Coding Challenges (Newsletter): https://codingchallenges.substack.com/
• Coding Challenges Website: https://codingchallenges.fyi
• From The Challenges - Git: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/p/from-the-challenges-git
• Will AI Kill Coding?: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/p/will-ai-kill-coding
• Using AI To Solve A Coding Challenge: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/p/using-ai-to-solve-a-coding-challenge
• Tech Lead Journal #178 — John Crickett: https://techleadjournal.dev/episodes/178/
• Confessions of a Data Guy — What Makes Great Engineers: https://www.confessionsofadataguy.com/decades-in-software-engineering-what-actually-makes-great-engineers-john-crickett/
• Coding Chats Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/59GU7gzyK2RdIDVkhNS2nt
• John Crickett on GitHub: https://github.com/johncrickett
• John Crickett on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/johncrickett
• John Crickett on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johncrickett.bsky.social
• John Crickett on X: https://x.com/johncrickett

Hosts

• Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
• Bethany: https://trustyduck.dev

• Brittany Ellich: ⁠https://brittanyellich.com

• ⁠Erika: ⁠https://github.com/eggyhead

Summary

Career growth through mentorship and work-life balance with Dave Schwantes, Senior Software Engineer at GitHub. Brittany and Dave explore why running toward meaningful work beats running from burnout, how mentorship became his primary form of engineering leverage, and what career happiness actually looks like across different life stages. From Instacart and Couchsurfing to building in-house bootcamps, Dave shares how sustainable engineering culture beats individual productivity hacks—and his take on how AI tools reshape what engineers really need to master.

Links

• Dave's personal site: https://dinosaurseateverybody.com
• Don't Break Prod (bite-sized career advice): https://dontbreakprod.com
• Grave Danger (Dave's spooky ska band) on Bandcamp: https://gravedangerskath.bandcamp.com
• Dave on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dorkrawk.bsky.social
• Dave on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschwantes
• Dave on GitHub: https://github.com/dorkrawk
• Web Dev Challenge Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2sEoZG8EIw
• The Engineer Manager Pendulum article: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/

Host

• Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
• Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com