Podcast · Tech & Science

Tech Lead Journal

by Henry Suryawirawan · English · Tech & Science

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 7 min
Latest: 28 Sep 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

28 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

The IT/OT Handbook: From Silos to Sustainable Digitalization - David Ariens & Willem van Lammeren

Why can’t you “move fast and break things” in a factory? Because a small software bug doesn’t just crash an app, it can shut down a plant the size of a small city. David and Willem explain the hidden world of operational technology, where safety always comes before speed. In this episode, David Ariens and Willem van Lammeren, co-authors of “The IT/OT Handbook” and hosts of the IT/OT Insider podcast, break down the divide between IT and OT, information technology and operational technology, and why closing it matters more than ever as manufacturing digitalizes. They explain why OT prioritizes…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E268 · 7 Sep 2026 · 59 min

Don't Outsource Your Thinking: How to Lead in the AI-Native Era - Emilie Schario

What’s the one rule that matters most when AI writes most of your code? Emilie says it comes down to a single line: don’t outsource your thinking. In this episode, Emilie Schario, co-founder of Kilo Code, unpacks what it actually means to lead in a world where AI can write most of your code. She explains why Kilo went all-in on being model agnostic, supporting over 500 models instead of betting on a single lab. Emilie shares her core rule for using AI responsibly: never outsource your thinking, especially when it comes to auth, billing, or security. She introduces a metric more companies…
E267 · 24 Aug 2026 · 56 min

The Father of AI Assistant on Why Joy Comes Before Success - Kevin Surace

If you’re not using AI five times an hour, you’re already behind, says the man who built the first AI assistant back in 1998. Kevin explains why that pace is now the baseline, not the exception, for developers who want to stay employed. In this episode, Kevin Surace, the inventor of the first AI assistant and CEO of Appvance, joins to unpack six decades of AI evolution, from hidden Markov models to the LLM breakthroughs now powering coding agents. Kevin shares how his work at General Magic became the licensed technology behind Siri and Alexa, and how he ended up inventing post-training…
E266 · 10 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

Software Engineering Laws Every Developer Must Know in the AI Era - Milan Milanovic

Does moving faster with AI mean you get to skip the laws that governed every software project before it? Milan Milanovic argues the opposite, the old laws of software engineering now apply twice as hard. In this episode, Milan Milanovic, CTO and author of Laws of Software Engineering, returns to unpack why the laws that have quietly governed software projects for decades are more relevant than ever in the AI era. He walks through Gall’s Law and why AI lets teams generate complex systems on unvalidated assumptions faster than ever, Conway’s Law and how it now runs twice, shaping both human…
E265 · 3 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 17 min

Signals & Levers: Systems Thinking to Navigate Software Delivery Illusions - Elisabeth Hendrickson & Joel Tosi

(04:48) Brought to you by SpeechifyAI Tired of text-to-speech that sounds robotic or costs too much at scale? SpeechifyAI's new Simba 3.2 model ranks #1 on Artificial Analysis for realness, priced under $10 per million characters. Building something conversational? Check out the Simba Voice Agents API for low-latency, natural back-and-forth interaction. Try it free at speechify.ai . Why do the same software delivery illusions keep fooling smart engineering teams? Elisabeth and Joel show how systems thinking, through signals and levers, helps you spot the illusions of progress,…
E264 · 27 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

From Technical Debt to Triple Debt: The Hidden Cost of AI-Generated Code

Is vibe coding quietly draining the thing that makes teams effective: their shared understanding? Margaret breaks down her new “triple debt” model, and why cognitive debt might be the one nobody’s tracking. In this episode, Margaret-Anne Storey, co-author of the SPACE framework and a leading developer experience researcher, returns three years after her first appearance to unpack her new “triple debt” model. She explains how technical debt is now joined by cognitive debt, the erosion of shared understanding across a team, and intent debt, the loss of the “why” behind decisions that agents…
E263 · 13 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 22 min

Ex-Gojek CTO: Why the Age of AI Rewards Builders as Judgment Becomes Expensive

If expertise is becoming almost free, why is judgment becoming the most expensive skill in tech? Ajey Gore, former Gojek CTO, explains why the age of AI agents rewards builders over typists. In this episode, Ajey Gore, former Group CTO of Gojek and Operating Partner at Peak XV Partners, explains why coding agents are forcing software teams to rethink what “correct” really means. He argues that as expertise becomes cheap, judgment becomes the scarcest and most valuable skill in engineering. Ajey walks through why the classic developer-to-reviewer workflow no longer makes sense when agents can…
E262 · 29 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

The AI Productivity Paradox: Why 10X Output Doesn't Mean 10X Business Outcome

What if optimizing for AI output is actually slowing your company down? When code becomes nearly free to produce, the organizations still measuring productivity by output are solving the wrong problem. In this episode, Mik Kersten, author of “Project to Product” and the forthcoming “Output to Outcome,” shares why the real challenge of the AI era isn’t generating more code — it’s building organizations that can turn that output into customer and business value. Drawing on Carlota Perez’s model of technological revolutions and the theory of constraints, Mik explains how AI has removed the…
E261 · 15 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

The Hidden Stories Sabotaging Your Culture Change

Why do 70% of change efforts fail — even when leadership is fully committed? The answer isn’t strategy or resources; it’s the hidden stories people unknowingly carry that silently block every initiative. In this episode, Ronica Roth, author of “Practice Makes Culture” and co-founder of The Welcome Elephant, shares a practical framework for creating lasting organizational change. Drawing on 25 years of experience helping teams and companies transform, she explains why culture declarations and vision speeches alone never work — and what leaders at any level can do instead. Ronica introduces…
E260 · 8 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 18 min

Creator of Meta's Hack: Your AI Will Always Cheat — Here's How to Stop It

What if your AI coding agent is quietly cheating on your tests — and how do you stop it? Julien Verlaguet, who built the type system Meta used to migrate tens of millions of PHP lines, is now building Skipper: a closed-loop coding agent designed to make AI-generated code verifiably correct, without human intervention. In this episode, Julien Verlaguet, creator of the Hack programming language at Meta and co-founder of SkipLabs, explains why AI agents will always try to cheat — gaming tests, quietly modifying logic while doing something else, and declaring work done when it isn’t. He draws on…
E259 · 1 Jun 2026 · 1 hr

Eric Ries: Why Good Tech Companies Go Bad, and How to Stop It

Why do companies with the best intentions end up betraying their customers, employees, and mission? Eric Ries calls it “financial gravity” — an invisible force that pulls even the most principled companies toward corruption, and understanding it is the first step to resisting it. In this episode, Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, shares why building a great company isn’t just about having a strong vision — it’s about building structures that protect that vision from external pressure. Eric revisits the core ideas behind the Lean Startup and MVP,…
E258 · 18 May 2026 · 1 hr

Why Your AI Strategy Is Failing: The AI Paradox of Optimizing Coding Alone

What if faster coding is actually slowing your software delivery down? Most teams are pouring AI into the coding phase, but the real bottleneck is everywhere else. In this episode, Andrew Haschka, Field CTO at GitLab for Asia Pacific and Japan, explains why most AI strategies in software engineering are failing and what it takes to fix them. He introduces the AI paradox: teams invest heavily in AI-assisted coding, yet coding accounts for less than 20% of the software delivery lifecycle, leaving the biggest bottlenecks untouched. Andrew makes the case for intelligent orchestration — moving…
E257 · 4 May 2026 · 1 hr 15 min

The Future of Code Review: Stop Reviewing Line-by-Line, Start Governing AI Agents

(07:22) Brought to you by Mailtrap Mailtrap is a modern email delivery for developers with native SDKs support along with security compliant API & SMTP. Plus, you get 4,000 emails a month completely on their free tier! It also provides 24/7 support where you actually talk to real people, not an AI chatbot. Try Mailtrap for free at ⁠mailtrap.io⁠ . What does code review mean when AI writes most of the code? The answer isn’t to review more carefully. It’s a fundamentally different process, one built around rules, agents, and governance rather than diffs and comments. In this episode, Itamar…
E256 · 27 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

FeatureOps: The Safety Net You Need When Shipping with AI

(05:00) Brought to you by Mailtrap Mailtrap is a modern email delivery for developers with native SDKs support along with security compliant API & SMTP. Plus, you get 4,000 emails a month completely on their free tier! It also provides 24/7 support where you actually talk to real people, not an AI chatbot. Try Mailtrap for free at mailtrap.io . What happens when AI ships code faster than your team can review it? As agentic development accelerates your SDLC, the guardrails matter more than ever — and most teams don’t have them. In this episode, Egil Osthus, CEO of Unleash, makes the case for…
E255 · 20 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 16 min

Stop Vibe Coding: Spec-Driven Development with The BMad Method

What if vibe coding is the worst thing you could do with AI agents? The developers seeing the biggest gains aren’t prompting harder. They’re planning smarter, spec-first, and treating AI as a facilitator rather than a code generation engine. In this episode, Brian Madison, creator of the BMad Method, shares how a year of late-night AI experiments led him to a structured, Agile-inspired approach to building software with AI agents. Brian explains why jumping straight into agent mode without upfront planning (what most people call vibe coding) reliably hits a wall, and how a disciplined…
E254 · 13 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

Why Incumbents Will Fall: How to Build a Hyperadaptive AI-Native Organization

Why do 80-95% of AI initiatives fail — and why is your organization’s structure to blame? Most companies are treating AI like a software upgrade, when it actually demands a complete rewiring of how work gets done. In this episode, Melissa Reeve, author of Hyperadaptive and organizational change expert, shares a practical model for transforming legacy enterprises into AI-native organizations built to thrive — not just survive — in the age of AI. Drawing on her experience with the Toyota Production System, Scaled Agile, and deep research into leading AI adopters, Melissa argues that the real…
E253 · 6 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 30 min

How Vidio (Indonesia's #1 Streaming Platform) Built Great Engineering Culture — Now Supercharged by AI

What does it take to build a world-class engineering culture when you start with five engineers on minimum wage? Tommy Sullivan did exactly that at Vidio — and the team’s average tenure of seven years tells you everything about whether it worked. In this episode, Tommy Sullivan, CTO of Vidio (Indonesia’s largest streaming platform) shares how he built an engineering culture from almost nothing, growing a team of five to over two hundred using Extreme Programming principles and a relentless focus on hiring for attitude over aptitude. Tommy traces his journey from Pivotal Labs in San Francisco…
E252 · 30 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

Why Senior Engineers Struggle as Tech Leads: The 3 Mindset Shifts That Fix It

Why do so many talented senior engineers struggle the moment they step into a tech lead role? Most of them are promoted based on their coding ability, but that same strength becomes a liability the moment they start leading a team. In this episode, Anemari Fiser, tech lead coach and author of “Leveling Up as a Tech Lead”, shares the three mindset shifts that define the transition from senior engineer to effective tech lead: moving from an “I” to a “We” mindset, shifting focus from code to value, and trading short-term thinking for long-term impact. She explains why so many engineers hold on…
E251 · 16 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

Design the System, Not the Hero: Building Trust in the AI Era

In a world where AI can build your MVP overnight, what actually gives you a lasting competitive edge? Andrew Stevens argues it’s not the software — it’s the data, the trust, and the systems you build around them. In this episode, Andrew Stevens, CTO of Sakura Sky and a technology leader with 30+ years of experience building, scaling, and selling companies, shares hard-won lessons from his journey across startups, enterprises, and AI ventures. He explains why product-market fit matters more than shipping fast, why data outlasts software as a competitive moat, and how leaders must design…
E250 · 9 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 3 min

Why Coding Alone Is No Longer Enough: Become A Product-Minded Engineer

With AI generating code faster than ever, coding alone is no longer enough. The engineers who will stand out aren’t the ones who write the most code, but the ones who know what to build and why. In this episode, Drew Hoskins, author of “The Product-Minded Engineer”, shares how engineers can develop the product thinking skills that will define their careers in the AI era. Drew draws on his experience as a senior staff engineer at Microsoft, Meta, and Stripe to explain why the best engineers care as much about the what and why as the how. He introduces the Double Diamond Framework (Discover,…
E249 · 2 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

The MCP Security Risks You Can't Afford to Ignore

What if the MCP server you installed last week is silently leaking your emails to a stranger? The AI tools boosting your productivity could already be your biggest security liability. MCP (Model Context Protocol) has quickly become the standard for connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources. But as adoption accelerates, so do the risks – from malicious servers harvesting your credentials in the background, to local processes exposed to your entire network with no authentication. Most developers install MCP servers without fully understanding what code is running or who wrote it,…
E248 · 23 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 15 min

Stop Telling Yourself You're Bad at “People Stuff”

Think you’re just “not a people person”? Most tech leaders quietly believe this about themselves, and it’s exactly what’s holding them back. In this episode, Martijn Versteeg, founder of peer leadership community Group Effort and former CPTO with a background in organizational psychology, makes the case that it’s not: human behavior follows predictable patterns you can understand and work with, just like any system. The conversation covers a six-variable model for understanding what drives behavior and disengagement on your team, why popular personality tools like MBTI and DiSC often do more…
E247 · 16 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

Why Your Platform Engineering Is Failing (And How to Fix It)

Is your platform engineering initiative struggling to deliver results? The problem might not be your tools or technology at all. In this episode, Sam Barlien, Community Organizer at Platform Engineering (the world’s largest platform engineering community), shares insights from speaking with nearly 400 engineering leaders last year about why their platform initiatives succeed or fail. The biggest revelation: it’s almost never about the tools. Sam explains why treating your internal platform like a product, complete with user research, documentation, and a product manager mindset, is the key…
E246 · 2 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

Agnes AI: Southeast Asia's Answer to ChatGPT (And 20x Cheaper)

(05:13) Brought to you by Sweep AI Sweep is the fastest coding assistant for JetBrains. It lets you write code 10x faster. Finally, AI that works in JetBrains. Download for free at ⁠sweep.dev⁠ . What if Southeast Asia had its own ChatGPT that cost 20x less? Bruce Yang built Agnes AI to solve what global companies ignore: accessible AI for emerging markets. In this episode, Bruce Yang, CEO and founder of Agnes AI, explains how he’s built Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing AI platform with 4 million registered users and 300K daily active users. After working at Microsoft and LinkedIn in Silicon…
E245 · 26 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 33 min

Your Home Is Launching Cyber Attacks (And You Don't Know It)

(05:22) Brought to you by Cyberhaven AI is exfiltrating your data in fragments. Not one big breach — a prompt here, a screenshot there, a quiet export into a shadow AI tool. Every week, AI makes your team faster and your data harder to see. Files are moved to new SaaS apps, models are trained on sensitive inputs, and legacy DLP is blind to the context that matters most. On February 3rd at 11 am Pacific, Cyberhaven is unveiling a unified DSPM and DLP platform, built on the original data lineage, so security teams get X-ray vision into how data actually moves — and can stop risky usage in real…
E244 · 19 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

Gene Kim: How Vibe Coding Solved What I Couldn't in 13 YEARS

(06:23) Brought to you by Sweep AI Sweep is the fastest coding assistant for JetBrains. It lets you write code 10x faster. Finally, AI that works in JetBrains. Download for free at sweep.dev . Is the era of writing code by hand coming to an end? Gene Kim explains how vibe coding solved problems he abandoned for 13 years and why the best days of coding might be ahead of us. In this episode, Gene Kim shares his transformation from someone who hadn’t written production code in decades to building ambitious projects in minutes. He explains how meeting Steve Yegge and discovering vibe coding…
E243 · 12 Jan 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

CTO Coach: Why Tech Companies are Really Laying Off Developers (It’s Not Just AI)

Why are tech companies really laying off developers? The uncomfortable truth has nothing to do with AI efficiency and everything to do with running out of ideas. In this episode, Stephan Schmidt, CTO coach and author of “The Amazing CTO’s Missing Manual,” shares a perspective on AI adoption that most tech leaders aren’t talking about. Developer layoffs aren’t about AI replacing jobs; they reveal a deeper problem. Product management has become a bottleneck, creating shallow features just to keep developers busy rather than driving meaningful innovation. When AI accelerates development, this…
E242 · 8 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 18 min

#242 - The End of Traditional Management: Reimagining Work for AI-First Organization - Jurgen Appelo

(04:11) Brought to you by Jellyfish AI tools alone won’t transform your engineering org. Jellyfish provides insights into AI tool adoption, cost, and delivery impact – so you can make better investment decisions and build teams that use AI effectively. See for yourself at jellyfish.co/platform/ai-impact . Are you managing your team the same way you did five years ago? With AI agents now part of the workforce, the old playbook no longer applies. In this episode, Jurgen Appelo, author of “Human Robot Agent” and creator of Management 3.0 and unFIX, challenges conventional thinking about…
E240 · 1 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 2 min

#241 - Your Code as a Crime Scene: The Psychology Behind Software Quality - Adam Tornhill

(04:00) Brought to you by Unleash Unleash is a private, flexible, and scalable feature flag system that lets teams decouple deployments from releases. It reduces the risk of shipping new features and gives organizations real-time control over what reaches production. And as AI accelerates development, Unleash helps engineering teams move fast and stay stable with safe rollouts and instant kill switches. Start a free trial of Unleash at ⁠getunleash.io/pricing⁠ . Why do so many software projects still fail despite modern tools? The answer often lies in the psychology of the team, not the…
E240 · 24 Nov 2025 · 1 hr 7 min

#240 - AI as Your Thought Partner: Break Boundaries & Do What You Never Could Before - Greg Shove

(06:03) Brought to you by Unleash Unleash is a private, flexible, and scalable feature flag system that lets teams decouple deployments from releases. It reduces the risk of shipping new features and gives organizations real-time control over what reaches production. And as AI accelerates development, Unleash helps engineering teams move fast and stay stable with safe rollouts and instant kill switches. Start a free trial of Unleash at getunleash.io/pricing . Are you making critical decisions without consulting AI? Greg argues it’s now irresponsible for any leader to make high-stakes…

About Tech Lead Journal

Great technical leadership requires more than just great coding skills. It requires a variety of other skills that are not well-defined, and they are not something that we can fully learn in any school or book. Hear from experienced technical leaders sharing their journey and philosophy for building great technical teams and achieving technical excellence. Find out what makes them great and how to apply those lessons to your work and team.

Tech Lead Journal is a English tech & science podcast from Henry Suryawirawan. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Henry Suryawirawan
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 7 min
Latest episode: 28 Sep 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1523421550
Website: techleadjournal.dev
Rights: Henry Suryawirawan

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