Software Engineering Unlocked

By Michaela Greiler

Technology Education Business Careers

What's Software Engineering Unlocked about?

In this show, I open you the doors to companies and thought leaders around the world. With my guests, I discuss software engineering best practices and pitfalls, and how they strive to build software people love.

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Measuring and improving dev...

06.23.2023

In this episode, Abi Noda explains how to measure developer experience and why a good developer experience matters. We also talk about: What factors influence developer experience What developer experience has to do with productivity, performance and even job retention ...

Software Engineering Unlocked episodes:

06.23.2023 Measuring and improving developer experience In this episode, Abi Noda explains how to measure developer experience and why a good developer experience matters. We also talk about: What factors influence developer experience What developer experience has to do with productivity, performance and even job retention ...
03.22.2023 From DevOps to Platform Engineering Luca Galante runs a vibrant and fast-growing community around platform engineering and today he shares with us why every organization should invest in a platform engineering team. We also talk about: - what is platform engineering - the difference between ...
03.08.2023 From English teacher to dev in 9 month: A self-taught developer journey Nadia Zhuk shares how to build a career as a self-taught programmer successfully. She learned to program all by herself and changed her career from being an English teacher to a full-stack developer. We also talk about: - teaching yourself ...
02.22.2023 Do code reviews frustrate developers? Alexander Serebrenik gives us an overview of his exciting research on emotions and social aspects of software engineering. We also talk about: social aspects of software engineering, what software productivity has to do with your emotions and how you feel, ...
02.08.2023 Fighting software vulnerabilities with software bill of materials Especially in recent years, several attacks on the software supply chain, like the SolarWinds attack or the ongoing Log4j vulnerability, made it clear that our complex software ecosystems are hard to understand and even harder to keep secure. The software ...
01.18.2023 A soul-crushing job search Heather Reid shares her difficult job search journey and how she overcame self-doubt and kept trying until she found the perfect job. Although Heather had been active in the testing community for over a decade, when she was searching for ...
01.04.2023 Entrepreneurship, Career Growth and Testing: Top 5 Episodes of 2022 Let's revisit the top 5 interviews in 2022, which gives us all the opportunity to listen to some episodes you might have already forgotten or missed. Episode Chapters: 0:00 Intro 01:21 Making money with open source 09:08 Profitable small bets ...
12.20.2022 Coding practices at MAANG companies versus startups Michael Lynch shares what he learned by writing code at Microsoft and Google, and how that differs from the software practices that he embraces in his own software company. We also talk about: - what is the root cause when ...
12.07.2022 Can Engineering metrics be ethical? Lauren Peate shares how engineering metrics can be ethical with Multitudes. We also talk about: - what are ethical developer metrics? - how to best measure developer productivity? - ensuring engineering metrics can not be misused - do developer metrics ...
11.16.2022 Collaborative debugging with Fiberplane Micha Hernandez van Leuffen shares how and why he built Fiberplane, a platform for collaborative debugging notebooks. We also talk about: - the idea behind collaborative debugging notebooks, - how Fiberplane can help resolve incidents faster and blamelessly, - how ...
11.02.2022 Deeply caring for developer experience Ashley Hunsberger deeply cares for developers, their happiness, and their productivity. After seeing how vital developer experience is, Ashley set-out to work in a relatively new role with new responsibilities: developer experience. Now, she is the Director of developer experience ...
08.24.2022 Making security easier for developers In this episode, I talk to Harshit Chitalia about how we can make security easier for developers. Harshit is the co-founder and CTO of Tromzo, a start-up dedicated to reducing the friction between developers and security. Before that Harshit spent ...
07.28.2022 Being an engineering manager wasn't for me In this episode, I talk to Nicolas Dular, a senior full-stack engineer at GitLab, about his experience of becoming an engineering manager. We talk about: - how he became an engineering manager - what he liked about this role - ...
07.13.2022 Mentoring as an engineering manager From workplace dynamics to code reviews, misunderstandings can arise for a variety of reasons. People have different interpretations of things or of what is said, different assumptions of others' motives, and simply miss out on the information they need to ...
06.29.2022 What hinders your career as a developer? – Mindset. For engineers feeling stuck and unfulfilled, my guest Dagna Bieda has valuable advice. Dagna is a software engineer turned career coach who has mentored 50+ clients, some of whom worked at big brand names (such as LinkedIn, Amazon, Google, Disney), ...
06.15.2022 Running a profitable training business for Ruby developers In the software world, there are a lot of opportunities. You just have to have the right mindset, preparations, and systems. In this episode, my guest Avdi Grimm shares how he found his independence by running a training and consulting ...
05.31.2022 What the heck is data-oriented programming? There is a simpler way to reduce complexity in our systems, and it starts with rethinking data. This is the core of Data-Oriented Programming and, in this episode, my guest Yehonathan Sharvit answers our questions about the paradigm. As an ...
05.04.2022 How I got a job at Spotify - Baby Break In this episode, I talk to Emma Bostian, who recently started as a software engineer at Spotify. And Emma is the kind of person, that not only applies and interviews for jobs, but at the same time writes a complete ...
04.13.2022 Improving Code Reviews with Github’s Copilot In this episode, my guest, Paige Bailey, shares her experience as a director of machine learning and machine learning operations. We discuss how we can ease the processes of reviewing data science codes through GitHub's codespaces and Copilot.
03.30.2022 Foster a learning culture in software engineering to overcome learning debt What does it take to foster a workplace culture where employees, specifically coders, have the liberty to learn without feeling punished for it by the system? Innovation is impossible without failure, but most work cultures suffocate creativity without realizing it. ...
03.16.2022 Running a developer community In this episode, I talk to Bekah Weigel, who runs the virtual coffee community about community building. Bekah graduated from a Bootcamp in 2019 and quickly created a striving and very special developer community in just under two years. We ...
03.01.2022 Entrepreneurship as a developer Daniel Vassallo left his cushy job at Amazon, where he made over half a million per year, to start his own business. We talk about: - anxiety when start-up attempts do not work out as planned - how he overcame ...
02.15.2022 Make money with open source software Alvaro Trigo is a web developer who could quit his full-time job due to his popular open-source software FullPage.js. We talk about: - how to use open source to make a living - how long it took him to build ...
02.02.2022 Are happy developers more productive? Let’s look at some research studies together to see whether “happy developers are more productive”. I will let you know my take on it, and how it relates to the study I did on developer experience. We talk about: - ...
01.18.2022 How to write tests that find bugs Dr. Mauricio Aniche explains how developers can write tests that find bugs. Writing effective test cases that bring confidence is not that easy. Many developers are familiar with testing frameworks and regularly write automated software tests. Yet, often they don’t ...
01.05.2022 Building a strong engineering culture through engineering values Learn how crystal clear engineering values can help you and your team to build a strong engineering culture. We deep dive into why well-defined, explicit engineering values are a competitive advantage for your engineer teams. We will also look at ...
12.23.2021 Measure developer productivity using the SPACE framework Dr. Storey explains how to best use the SPACE framework to measure the productivity of software engineering teams. Dr. Storey is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria and a distinguished expert in empirical software engineering. We ...
12.07.2021 Do not measure developer productivity In this special episode (50th) I’ll tell you a bit about the research on developer experience and developer productivity that kept me so busy this year. You will learn about: - some history of productivity-focused thinking - new productivity research ...
11.23.2021 Content creation as a career path for developers In this episode, I talk to Florin Pop. Florin is a web developer that started building websites in 2013 and worked many years as a successful freelancer. I know Florin from his super-popular YouTube channel and his funny and inspiring ...
09.28.2021 Driving innovation and engineering practices with Dr. Holly Cummins In this episode, I talk to Dr. Holly Cummins. Holly was the development practice lead for IBM Garage for Cloud, before becoming an innovation leader in IBM’s corporate strategy team. She drives innovation for companies in various industries, such as ...
09.14.2021 Better collaboration & performance through diversity and inclusion In this episode, I talk to Trier Bryant and Kim Scott who co-founded the company Just Work which helps organizations and individuals create more equitable workplaces. Trier Bryant is a strategic executive leader with distinctive Tech, Wall Street, and military ...
08.31.2021 Falling in love with the JavaScript community In this episode, I talk to Tracy Lee. Tracy is the CEO and co-founder of This Dot Labs, a widely successful dev shop. She is also a speaker, conference organizer, and blogger. We talk about: - how she dared to ...
08.17.2021 Bootstrapping Netlify to a multi-million-dollar company In this episode, I talk to Matt Biilmann. Matt Matt is the CEO and co-founder of Netlify – the modern platform for high-performance websites and apps. Netlify has around 150 employees and an estimate of over 20 million dollars of ...
08.03.2021 Responsibilities of a Chief Data Officer In this episode, I talk to Patrick Wagstrom. Patrick is the Chief Data Officer at Brightcove. Before that Patrick was the director of emerging technology at Verizon, meaning that he leveraged AI/ML, augmented reality, blockchain, IoT, quantum computing, and even ...
07.20.2021 Using Entrepreneurship 101 to Build a New Profitable Business In this episode, I talk to Karls Hughes. Karl is a software engineer who turned into an entrepreneur in the midst of the pandemic last year. His start-up draft.dev creates content that reaches software engineers - which means he combined ...
05.19.2021 The Secret To High Quality Code with Dr. Michaela Greiler and Liran Haimovitch In this episode, I talk to Liran Haimovitch, CTO of Rookout - an effortless debugging tool, about how to get to high-quality code. We talk about: - what are the challenges of moving fast - what does productivity mean - ...
05.04.2021 Getting ready for a billion-dollar business In this episode, I talk to Max Stoiber. Max is a JavaScript Engineer that is in love with React and Node, and also a fellow Austrian. He has a track record in the open-source world, worked for Gatsby, and Github, ...
04.13.2021 From designer to web developer In this episode, I talk to Annie Liew, who works as a web developer at a startup called Pastel. She transitioned from Design to Engineering, and I want to know how she experienced this. We talk about: - about her ...
03.30.2021 Legacy code and what to do with it - with Michael Feathers In this episode, I talk to Michael Feathers. Michael is the author of the super-popular book “working effectively with legacy code”. He is also the founder and director of R7K Research and Conveyance, a company that helps engineering teams with ...
03.16.2021 Underrepresented, Underpaid & Undervalued – Having to change jobs to advance your career In this episode, I talk to Jenn Creighton. Jenn is a Senior Staff Engineer at Apollo. Jenn specialized in frontend-end development is currently working on the open-source work for Apollo GraphQL. She also is a frequent conference speaker, an authoritative ...
02.16.2021 From bootcamp straight into a full-time dev role In this episode, I talk to Natalie Davis. Natalie is a recent Bootcamp graduate that managed to get hired quickly after graduating. She is vividly sharing her knowledge on Twitter and started to make real waves in the dev community ...
02.02.2021 How Programmers Think and Learn with Prof. Felienne Hermans In this episode, I talk to Felienne Hermans, who is an associate professor at the University of Leiden and researches how developers think and learn. We talk about: - why it is so hard to read and understand code, - ...
01.19.2021 Vulnerability disclosure with Katie Moussouris In this episode, I talk with Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security. Luta Security specializes in helping businesses and governments work with hackers and security researchers to better defend themselves from digital attacks. Katie is also an expert ...
12.22.2020 From intern to CEO with agile testing expert Alex Schladebeck In this episode, I talk to Alex Schladebeck, a testing expert, and a powerful voice in the tech community. Alex is the CEO of Bredex, a dev shop that offers tailor-made IT solutions but also specializes in quality assurance and ...
12.08.2020 Serverless is your competitive advantage In this episode, I talk to Nader Dabit. Nader is a web and mobile developer, who specializes in building cross-platform and cloud-enabled applications. Right now, he works at Amazon Web Services, where he develops features in the client team and ...
11.24.2020 Combatting tech debt in war rooms In this episode, I talk to Tomasz Łakomy, a senior frontend engineer at OLX Group. Tomasz is fascinated about teaching everything he knows and has over 170 video tutorials. We talk about: - how they develop, test, and reviews software ...
11.10.2020 Getting into FAANG companies without a CS degree In this episode, I talk to Ben Lesh. Ben is a Senior Software engineer at Citadel Securities. Before that, Ben worked amongst other companies, at Google and Netflix. Ben is also the Project Lead for RxJS. RxJS is a library ...
10.27.2020 No mocks allowed - A discussion with Kent C. Dodds In this episode, I talk to Kent C. Dodds, a software engineer, and teacher. Before starting his entrepreneurial journey, Kent has been working for PayPal. He is a major open source contributor and also the creator and maintainer of the ...
10.13.2020 How design systems help create an inclusive user experience at Github In this episode, I talk to Diana Mounter, the Director of Design Infrastructure at GitHub. Diana traveled the world and lived in many different countries – even continents. She started as a print designer and spent some time in government ...
09.29.2020 How I got a job at Spotify during a pandemic – Emma Bostian In this episode, I talk to Emma Bostian, who recently started as a software engineer at Spotify. And Emma is the kind of person, that not only applies and interviews for jobs, but at the same time writes a complete ...

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