The Stack Overflow Podcast

The home team is joined by two folks who help us build and design our frontend platform: Ben Kelly and Aaron Shekey. They talk about the genesis of Stacks, Stack Overflow’s design system; this year’s April Fool’s Day gag; and the power of a consistent design system.

The home team chats with Andi Gutmans, Google’s GM and VP of Engineering, Databases about the forgotten beauty of Pascal, why so many devs hate PHP, and why companies should prioritize the developer experience.

Ceora, Matt, and Ben chat about the global impact UX decisions, like a chronological timeline, can have on users and society. Plus, the team explores the average tenure of a Google Employee, the continuing churn among developers as demand for talent stays high, and what it means now that ride-sharing apps, which once promised to undo the taxi industry, are finding ways to partner with traditional cab companies.

Ben and Cassidy compare notes on Plex.tv, the rapid collapse of Fast.co, and why rigorous adherence to personal security protocols can make the FBI suspicious.

The home team discusses pay equity at New Relic, Okta’s security SNAFU, and the AI creating “wildly good” generative art.

The home team chats with Jon Chan, Stack Overflow’s Director of Engineering, Public Platform, about his path from self-taught developer to director of engineering, why his management mantra is “Delegate and elevate,” the profound value of a diverse and inclusive workplace, and the Neopets-to-frontend-development pipeline. Plus, Jon gives excellent advice to all the self-taught developers out there.

The home team discusses React’s major version upgrade, how women in software engineering are often shunted into marketing or project management roles, and the brilliant analogy Cassidy used to explain to her parents how software engineers still have jobs after they’re done building the app.

The home team sits down with Mattaniah Aytenfsu, a UX Engineer at YouTube, up-and-coming TikTok influencer, and creative technologist. They talk about our unfortunate tendency to divide kids into “science kids” and “art kids,” the difference between being a software engineer and a UX engineer, and why it’s important to be gracious with yourself when you lose focus on a project.

Moar Power! On this episode Ben, Cassidy, and Matt talk new Mac machines, developers’ favorite OS, and empty NPM packages. Time to ditch those dongles!

The home team talks with Guillermo Rauch, CEO and cofounder of Vercel and cocreator of Next.js, and Sam Lambert, formerly VP of Engineering at Github and now CEO of PlanetScale. They cover how Vercel and PlanetScale are making the web more accessible to developers, the future of web development for professional programmers, and why human laziness is the ultimate security threat.