Refactoring Podcast

Today's guest is Annie Duke, who is a former world-class professional poker player and one of the world's top experts on decision-making.She's a bestseller author and coach of many tech founders and teams.With Annie we talked about her journey from studying decision science to becoming a top poker player and back to decision-making. We explored how to make good decisions under uncertainty, alone and in a team. And we particularly focused on quitting decisions, what maked for a good versus a bad quit and why we are so bad at recognizing those.00:01:31 Introduction00:03:45 From poker to decision-making00:08:30 Sponsor00:10:07 Poker and the definition of "resulting"00:16:42 Feedback loops and decision-making00:21:59 Successful but not hungry00:26:14 A good decision-making process00:35:24 Qualifying the market00:38:17 Team decision-making00:47:46 Quitting00:52:43 Make quitting easier01:08:43 Kill criteria—This episode is brought to you by Unblocked! Unblocked brings all the context about your codebase together, so your team gets expert-level answers, no matter where they’re working.Learn more at getunblocked.com!—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Maude Lemaire, who is a principal engineer at GitHub and author of the book, "Refactoring at Scale."With Maude, we talked about her journey in tech, from Rent the Runway to joining Slack and leading its performance engineering team to joining GitHub as a principal engineer. And then we discussed what it means to do refactoring at scale, how to do it right, how to bring people on board, and what are the biggest mistakes you should avoid.00:01:06 Introduction00:02:05 Maude's journey in tech00:08:23 Sponsor00:09:34 Rent a Runway00:12:56 Joining Slack00:15:54 Approaching GitHub00:22:04 Changing company00:26:00 Onboarding in a big tech00:33:02 From data center to cloud00:38:22 A team for a purpose00:49:07 The biggest mistakes in large scale refactoring00:54:34 One big mistake00:57:58 Testing in production01:03:16 Test production: Big tech vs startup—This episode is brought to you by Swarmia! The engineering intelligence platform that serves some of the best software companies in the world.You can get 20% off by booking a demo at swarmia.com/refactoring!—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Kevin Smith, who is co-founder of Snipd, one of the world's most popular podcast apps.With Kevin, we talked about his journey in tech, starting from quantitative finance and then running an AI team in a high-growth startup up to actually founding one with Snipd. Then we segued into talking about Snipd itself and what are the technical challenges of working with AI models all the time. And finally, we discussed the future of learning, what are Kevin's favorite podcasts, what makes them good, and how AI enables personalized learning at scale.01:26 Introduction01:45 Kevin's journey in tech04:18 AI giant leaps07:38 Sponsor08:50 Kevin's transition to founder16:30 What is Snipd?18:20 On AI models21:25 Snipd technical challenges29:49 How to improve quality in AI output31:30 AI in team management and dev processes34:19 AI coding enhancements38:05 Learning with modern tools42:50 Personalize learning with AI45:51 Kevin's favourite podcasts47:58 What makes a good podcast good?—This episode is brought to you by Swarmia! The engineering intelligence platform that serves some of the best software companies in the world.You can get 20% off by booking a demo at swarmia.com/refactoring!—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Dennis Pilarinos, who is founder and CEO of Unblocked. With Dennis, we talked about his journey in tech, which is just incredible, starting from director roles at Microsoft and Amazon, then founding BuddyBuild and later selling it to Apple, and eventually to these days where he founded Unblocked. And later we talked about Unblocked itself, which is one of the few developer AI tools that is specifically not about coding.So we talked about what problem it solves and the hardest tech challenges that the team has to work with.And finally, we discussed the future of DevTools, because Dennis has founded not one, but two companies about it. And this is a time of big transformation, with MCP, AI agents and more.01:48 Introduction02:33 Dennis' journey in tech06:11 Sponsor07:48 Adapting big tech knowledge15:31 Adding context to AI15:29 Managing humans and chaos25:03 AI and hallucination issue27:14 The tipping point of evolution28:33 The future of developer workflow34:25 Increase documentation to increase context33:43 AI: a future without layers36:53 Setting up a new dev team—This episode is brought to you by Swarmia! The engineering intelligence platform that serves some of the best software companies in the world.You can get 20% off by booking a demo at swarmia.com/refactoring!—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Michael Lopp, better known as Rands, who is Senior Director of Engineering at Apple and writer of several popular books about engineering management, including "Managing Humans", which is a personal favorite of mine.

With Rands, we discuss his journey into writing and the impact it had on his personal and professional growth. We reflected on his leadership style and the complexities of modern engineering management.

01:07 Introduction

02:49 Rands first steps in writing

06:06 Sponsor

07:46 Does writing help in managing?

13:05 Michael and Rands

15:29 Managing humans and chaos

19:56 Mentoring fresh managers

21:31 Rands' managing style

28:27 Feedbacks

30:25 Changes in engineering management

33:43 AI: a future without layers

40:10 Testing a thesis

42:40 AI Interation = People Interation

45:07 What is not going to change

48:38 The 10%

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You can also find this at:

• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm

• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw

• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305

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For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Guillermo Rauch, who is CEO and founder of Vercel.With Guillermo, we talked about his journey in tech, from a small-town in Argentina, to successful open-source developer, to CEO of a billion-dollar company. Then we covered the unique Vercel model, which combines open-source and commercial work. And finally, we discussed the future of AI, engineers, open-source and software engineering at large.01:29 Introduction02:04 What is Vercel?04:40 Vercel's "secret sauce"06:46 Guillermo's journey in tech10:31 Vercel vs Complexity12:07 Helping solo engineers and great teams17:38 The importance of JavaScript20:23 TypeScript and JavaScript22:11 Satisfying both open source and market landscape28:18 For the open-source engineers32:35 The last frameworks36:55 AI current limitations38:59 The best framework for AI43:48 100 milliseconds48:34 Does Guillermo still code?52:10 The founder mode53:59 AI will make us full stack—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Ori Keren, who is CEO and co-founder of LinearB and has more than 25 years of experience in the industry, especially in developer experience and productivity.
With Ori, we talked about how AI is infiltrating all the stages of the development process, from coding to testing to code reviews. We discussed  how AI is already restructuring teams and how engineering leaders can drive adoption by combining culture, small wins and full moon shots.

01:07 Introduction
01:59 Development productivity in 2025
08:29 Code creation process and AI
10:46 Coding and bottlenecks
15:05 Cognitive unload using AI
16:48 The journey of AI adoption
21:50 AI native environment
24:57 How teams are changing
28:35 More AI = More development
30:40 The skeptcisim about coding with AI
33:50 Removing the toil from coding
35:31 AI help outside coding
41:50 How to integrate AI in a company
44:38 Go with the (AI) flow
45:34 Education in prompting
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You can also find this at:
• Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305
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For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Abi Noda, the CEO and founder of DX, one of the leading engineering intelligence platforms.With Abi, we talked about measuring developer experience. We started with the early days of Accelerate and why we feel like most people got the book wrong. And then we continued to present days and how research focuses on driving great developer experience. And finally, we couldn't avoid talking about AI and why it seems to be a game changer for entrepreneurs, but not so much for teams yet.01:23 Introduction02:45 Abi's journey in tech08:19 The four key metrics10:41 Metrics' reliability13:41 Diagnostic metrics16:06 A metric analogy18:23 Find productivy metrics drive22:03 What makes a developer experience good?29:44 The importance of comparison31:53 Common issues in developer experience34:55 Are meetings bad?36:16 AI in development process—This episode is brought to you by https://sleuth.io—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Salvatore Sanfilippo, also known as Antirez!Salvatore is the creator of Redis, an open source data store used by hundreds of thousands of developers across the world. And he's also a writer. He published the popular sci-fi novel called Wohpe, which anticipated a lot of what is happening today with AI.With Salvatore, we talked about open source — what makes a project successful and how to make it successful for its maintainers. Then we discussed how Salvatore uses AI for extremely complex coding, which makes him 5x faster than without AI. And finally, I asked him about his writing work and what is the experience of writing a novel versus a software project.02:55 Introduction06:47 Salvatore's life priorities12:40 Develop an open source project in 2025 18:14 Being a generalist with AI support19:25 Making an open source project sustainable23:54 Complexity of modern front-end development24:58 Big Tech, complexity and open source30:19 Escaping the complexity loop33:40 The rebirth of fullstack through AI34:53 How Salvatore creates code with AI41:16 Does AI increase code productivity?44:14 The importance of the right prompt47:06 Writing tests in the AI era of development50:49 Whope, Salvatore's sci-fi novel53:28 Writing a novel and writing code—This episode is brought to you by https://workos.com—Some show notes:• Salvatore's website: https://antirez.com/• Salvatore's Youtube:    / @antirez  • Wohpe:   / wohpe  —You can also find this at:

• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm
• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9d...
• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]

Today's guest is Joel Chippindale!Joel is a full-time CTO Coach and one of the coaches-in-residence in the Refactoring community, where he runs monthly mastermind sessions and other community events.So with Joel, we dived into what coaching is, the difference with mentoring, one-on-one versus group coaching, and what are the top challenges that CTO faces today, based on the work that Joel does with his coaches.02:34 Introduction03:40 Joel's journey in tech05:21 Finding a definition of coaching07:25 Mentoring and coaching roles10:22 One-to-on and group coaching12:53 The "hows" of coaching15:12 Is coaching a widespread practice?18:35 Top CTOs challenges21:43 Right support for right challenges26:08 Advocating for technical work31:53 Commonalities and uniquenesses in CTOs challenges34:20 The platonic ideal of CTO36:49 Choosing what to focus on39:48 How to delegate properly

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This episode is brought to you by https://workos.com

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You can also find this at:

- 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm

- 📱 YouTube: https://youtu.be/HgKAg1rtQoE

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For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: [email protected]