Shows
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#122 - Grid Control in Milliseconds: Engineering Energy Systems with Barbara Wittenberg // CTO @ 1KOMMA5°Real-time system architecture lessons from the edge of the energy transition
Technical infrastructure enables the modern energy transition. Barbara Wittenberg, CTO at 1KOMMA5°, reveals the engineering challenges behind connecting and optimizing 40,000+ household energy assets while building a unified tech platform after acquiring 80+ companies across 7 countries.
Tech leaders will find valuable parallels to their own challenges as Barbara discusses how her team modernized legacy systems, managed complex integrations, and deployed advanced optimization algorithms that must respond in milliseconds to prevent grid failures.
Key technical insights include:
🏗️ Building infrastructure-as-code and standardizing operations across acquired companies
📊 Creating data pipe...2025-05-161h 01
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#119 - Navigating Ambiguity and AI's Impact on Engineering feat. Ivan Kusalic // CTO @ EnpalLeading in ambiguous environments and the impact of AI on engineering practices
In this episode, Tobi talks with Ivan Kusalic, CTO of Enpal, who leads a team of 250 engineers at one of Germany's leading solar energy companies. Ivan shares insights from his extensive technical leadership journey and his recent return to coding after seven years due to his excitement about AI.
Ivan discusses how he navigates complexity and ambiguity in the renewable energy sector, where Enpal builds systems to help households manage solar panels, batteries, EV chargers, and heat pumps as integrated energy solutions. He explains the...2025-04-0456 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#118 - Radical Engineering Culture and High Bar Hiring feat. Stefan Richter // Founder & CTO @ freiheit.com technologiesShip Great Software Through Simplicity and Discipline
Discover insights into building a high-performance engineering organization with Stefan Richter, founder of freiheit.com technologies. With 25+ years of experience delivering successful software projects for the Who’s Who of European businesses and industries, Stefan shares his philosophy of radical engineering culture and maintaining an exceptionally high bar in recruiting. This episode dives deep into how freiheit.com has achieved their "Never Late, Never Failed" mission through disciplined processes, carefully selected talent, and a relentless focus on simplicity.
Listen to find out:
🎯 Why shipping great software is their mission
🧑💻 How they main...2025-03-201h 02
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#117 - Navigating AI Trends with Dat Tran // Partner & CTO @ DATANOMIQ, VP AI/ML @ Beams Safety AITobi and Dat discuss AI's impact on technical leadership, tools, deep learning, and Europe's innovation scene, including practical use cases for AI agents.
AI is moving faster than ever, and staying ahead of the curve is a challenge for every tech leader. In this episode, Dat Tran joins Tobi to break down what’s happening in the AI space, from cutting-edge model releases to AI-powered productivity tools and the global race for AI dominance. Dat has spent years leading AI teams at Idealo and Axel Springer, co-founding AI-driven startups, and now helps companies make sense of AI without the fl...2025-02-071h 08
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#116 - Exploring Platform Engineering feat. Camille Fournier // CTO @ Open Athena & Author @ O'Reilly MediaPlatform Teams and DevOps Optimization: Insights from Camille Fournier on platform engineering, career growth, and CTO strategies for success.
How do you create an effective platform team and optimize DevOps? Tobi interviews Camille Fournier about her career, technical insights, and best practices in platform engineering. Camille shares her journey from building her own computers and installing Linux in high school to becoming Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase and authoring influential books for engineers 📚.
👩💻 Camille's early fascination with computers and engineering, including building her own systems and installing Linux
📚 Authoring 'The Manager's Path' and 'Platform Engineering'
🌐 Understanding platform engineering and i...2025-01-231h 03
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders115 - Exploring Growth and Compliance feat. Dennis Winter // CTO @ Börse StuttgartScaling Tech in Regulated Industries: Engineering Growth with Security, Compliance, and Culture
Ever wondered how regulated companies like stock exchanges handle tech growth? Dennis Winter (CTO @ Börse Stuttgart) shares how to build engineering organizations in regulated environments. With experience from embedded systems to leading tech at SolarisBank and Börse Stuttgart, he dives deep into scaling teams while maintaining security and compliance standards 🏦
🏗️ Early-stage tech decisions and building engineering culture
🔄 Evolving team structures and processes as you scale beyond 50 employees
🔐 Security and compliance in regulated environments
🛠️ Infrastructure automation and the importance of early monitoring
🤝 Building team ownership and accountability in re...2025-01-091h 02
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#113 - Faster Incident Response feat. Tim Armandpour // CTO @ PagerDutyPlanning AND Practice: The Secret to Incident Response
Plan and PRACTICE for better incident response with insights from Tim Armandpour, CTO of PagerDuty. Learn the secrets to resilience from the team that mitigated the impact of a major outage—handling a 250% traffic surge while delivering on their SLA.
Listen to find out:
🛠️ Why planning AND practice are both critical for incident response.
🚧 How to practice for incident response (e.g Failure Fridays with Chaos Engineering)
🧑🤝🧑 Ownership: Why tech AND business teams must join post-mortems.
☁️ How to mitigate the impact of your cloud provider’s lower SLA.
⚓ Which architectural patterns ar...2024-12-0550 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#112 - Cross Functional Team Members feat. Daniel Bartholomae // CTO @ optilyzCross-Functional Team Members: What, Why, How
Find out about cross-functional team members with Daniel Bartholomae, CTO at optilyz (direct mail SaaS). At optilyz, team members wear multiple hats—whatever hats they need to own the product lifecycle. From product management and design to development and customer engagement, this model eliminates silos and drives efficiency. Daniel breaks down how this innovative approach works, the tools and processes that make it possible, and why it’s a perfect fit for small B2B SaaS companies.
Listen to find out:
🚀 How ‘no product managers’ = efficient ‘sprints’
🛠️ Why optilyz opts for Miro and Asana i...2024-11-2149 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#110 - Developer Efficiency feat. Rebecca Murphey // Field CTO @ Swarmia & Co-Author of BuildAligning engineering with business outcomes, developer productivity and developer experience
Become a more effective team in this CTO podcast featuring Rebecca Murphey, Field CTO of Swarmia and co-author of Build. From her years of experience working in the developer productivity organizations at Stripe and Indeed and now at Swarmia, Rebecca knows this conversation isn’t just about developer metrics and productivity - it’s about the broader picture 🖼️. How do we align🧭 our engineering work with business outcomes💸, developer experience 😀AND developer productivity⚡. And just as important, how do we communicate what we’re doing (and not doing) to other stakeholders?2024-10-2453 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#108 - Monitoring as Code feat.Hannes Lenke // CEO & Co-founder @ ChecklyHow DevOps has Changed QA
Keep an eye on the latest trends in this CTO podcast episode featuring Hannes Lenke (CEO and Co-founder of Checkly). Hannes shares insights from over a decade of shaping the testing and monitoring landscape. From AI-powered mobile testing to cloud-based browser testing to synthetic monitoring, he has seen it all.
Listen to find out:
👀 What is "Monitoring as Code"? How does it differ from traditional observability?
🔄 Has DevOps changed QA forever? Is there still a place for dedicated QA teams in an automated world?
🚀 How did Checkly evolve into a PLG company with a sales tea...2024-09-301h 02
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#106 - Meritocracy, Backend and Engineer-led Sales feat. Shyam Sankar // CTO @ Palantir TechnologiesDiversity in Meritocracy Through Rebellion
Discover new ways to do things with Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir, who is working to deprecate backend development using their experience with 150 independent dev teams running a collection of 5,000 microservices. Yet this podcast is more than that (although I was blown away by the demo)—expect great nuggets of wisdom on meritocracy, data, and of course, backend. Think of this podcast as a series of back-to-back nuggets of wisdom that not only help you make sense of what you've observed but also open your mind to emerging trends.
Listen to find ou...2024-08-3048 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#105 - Trust & Accountability in Remote Teams feat. Sabrina Farmer // CTO @ GitLabAI-driven DevSecOps
Find out how to build trust and accountability in a fully remote team in this CTO podcast featuring Sabrina Farmer, CTO @ GitLab. You will also hear how Sabrina draws on her experience in AI, DevSecOps, and her 19 years at Google to rethink the developer experience.
Listen to find out:
How Gitlab's CEO Challenge encourages developers to innovate and automate away historic challenges (e.g. Log4js)
Why DevOps is just problem-solving 🕵️♀️ at all levels of the stack
How to use AI to create teaching moments 💡 in the developer workflow
How GitLab onboards quicker with detailed documentation📝 (no tribal knowledge...2024-08-1651 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#104 - End-to-End Technical Independence feat. Alexander Matthey // CTO @ AdyenIndependent. Direct. Security First
Discover the benefits of end-to-end technical independence with Alexander Matthey, CTO of Adyen.
Learn why Adyen cherishes its in-house strategy as Alexander shares how Adyen’s extreme technical independence (no third-party vendors) enables efficiency in everything from libraries to security.
Listen to find out:
Security First: How Adyen makes security a priority for everyone. 🔒
Pick Up the Phone📞: How direct communication makes them more efficient.
How Adyen’s long-term vision drives innovation. 🚀
How Conway’s Law is applied to their team structure
Listen here
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction to the Alphalist Podcast
(00:44...2024-08-0159 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#103 - David Cramer // Co-Founder + CPO @ SentryDevTool 101 and evolving role of co-founder
Explore the evolution of both a product and the role of its co-founder in this CTO podcast featuring David Cramer (co-founder + CPO @ Sentry). You will discover the pros and cons of each stage in Sentry's journey (open source -> bootstrap -> VC) and why David's role evolved (CEO -> CTO -> CPO).
Listen to find out
🔄 Why his role has evolved: CEO -> CTO -> CPO
🧑💻 DevTool Marketing 101: Inspiration, Attention, and Conversation
💰 How to monetize open source
🎨 How good branding and design can make an "unsexy" product cool
💳 The power of the self-serve mo...2024-07-1853 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#102 - Platform Engineering feat. Boyan Dimitrov // CTO @ SIXTPlatform Engineering: Modularised, Standardised and Automated.
Discover how to leverage platform engineering 🏗️ for convenience, standardization, automation, and reduced cloud costs in this CTO podcast featuring Boyan Dimitrov (CTO @ SIXT). SIXT is a leading global mobility provider serving customers in over 100 countries worldwide. With 800 tech employees globally, they have spent the past eight years standardizing and modularizing their tech stack to achieve unparalleled scalability.
Listen to find out:
How to apply the 80:20 rule to Platform ⚖️
How to automate 🔄infrastructure without tickets 🎟️
How to reduce cloud costs ☁️with Platform Engineering
How to evaluate ⚖️ an IDP
Why they standardize hosting (cloud and database) 🗄️
Open Sou...2024-07-041h 11
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#101 - AI Revolution Roundtable feat. Jonas Andruilis (Aleph Alpha), Rasmus Rothe (Merantix) & Johannes Schaback (SumUp)Transformative AI, Build/Buy AI, Business Opportunities and more
Get ready for the AI industrial revolution 🦸 in this CTO podcast episode featuring a roundtable of AI AllStars!
So much is happening in AI, and you want to be part of it - that is why we asked
Jonas Andrulis (Founder and CEO of Aleph Alpha), Rasmus Rothe (Co-founder of Merantix and its AI Campus) and Johannes Schaback (CTO of SumUp) to share with us a broad overview of what CTOs need to know about upcoming AI revolution. Turns out, we aren’t waiting for AGI - we are working on Tr...2024-05-1657 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#100 - Intuition over 'Data Driven' feat. Jason Fried // co-founder + CEO @ 37signalsIntuition over Data-Driven, Hooks over Towel Rails and Profit over Revenue
Trust your intuition, you will gain a lot from this CTO podcast featuring Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of 37signals, a company known for having groundbreaking policies and products (Basecamp, HEY, Once, etc.). He is also bootstrapping hero and author of multiple books (Getting Real, REWORK, REMOTE, It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work).
Listen to find out:
Intuitive🔮 over ‘data-driven’ 🔢decision making
Hook 🪝 vs Towel Rail 🎏: The Power of Simple, Versatile Products
CEO-CTO Relationship: How to counteract the negativity brought on by the typical push-p...2024-05-0358 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#97 - From Maker to Multiplier feat. Pat Kua // CTO Coach and Founder of the Tech Lead AcademyLeadership Unlearnings, Metrics, Mindshifts and Communication
Let’s become better Multipliers ✖️ in this CTO Podcast featuring Pat Kua, former CTO of N26 who by popular request now helps CTOs Level Up themselves and their teams. As a sought-after expert in helping ICs transition to leadership roles, Pat shares leadership gems with CTOs.
Listen to find out:
Why you should fly high 🕊️and dive deep 🤿
Why even ICs need leadership skills 🧑💻
Maker⚒️ to Multiplier🌬️: What you need to unlearn when you move into management.
How to communicate: CRY Principle, Translate into Foreign Tongue 💬.. And TCP vs UDP Communication
What the long German Hiring Cycles mean...2024-03-1449 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#96 - Radical Transparency feat. Charles Gorintin // CTO @ Alan & Co-Founding Advisor at MistralRadical Transparency in Salaries, Decisions, and People
Discover the power of radical transparency🧐 with Charles Gorintin, CTO of Alan (a French InsurTech) and founding force behind Mistral. He may work in a regulated space, but there is nothing typical about Alan’s setup when it comes to internal matters.
Public Salary Framework ✅Searchable Board Meetings ✅4 Managers for 90 FTE✅
Listen to find out:
Why the Manager Role is split into Leads🧑💻 and Coaches 🪔
How Transparent Compensation 💸works with public Salary Levels and Performance Reviews
How he hires 🤝: talent density, culture add and more specialized than him
Why he saw the need for Mistral 🇪🇺
How...2024-02-291h 02
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#95 - Self-Efficacy and the journey from CTO to CPTO and Back feat. David Gebhardt // CTO @ mobile.deCPTOs, Timeboxing and Inbox Zero
Become a better CTO/CPTO with these insights from David Gebhardt, CTO (and former CPTO) of mobile.de (Germany’s largest car vehicle marketplace).
Originally the Head of Tech, David evolved into CPTO, eventually leading the 400-strong Product+Tech teams before evolving business needs led him to bring on a CPO and go back to being ‘just’ the CTO (“only” 250 people). He shares why in this great CTO podcast.
Listen to find out:
Why he went from CTO to CTPO and back 🤔
Self-Efficacy as CTO ✅: How to be effective and FEEL effective
Where...2024-02-1555 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#94 - Melanie Rieback // Co-founder & CEO at Radically Open SecurityCybersecurity for CTOs in 2024
Let’s hack cybersecurity in 2024 with Melanie Rieback, Co-founder & CEO of Radically Open Security, the world’s first not-for-profit cybersecurity consultancy with a focus on PenTesting🔏.
Melanie is on a mission to fix cybersecurity consulting by putting people before profits and empowering internal teams “how to fish” 🎣.
Tune in to hear about the current cybersecurity landscape from the person who not only authored a viral RFID paper (“Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus?”), but also PenTested Tor, Homebrew and Greenpeace.
Listen to find out:
What is the business model💸 behind Post Growth Entrepreneurship (90...2024-02-011h 07
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#93 - The Technical CTO + Readying for IPO feat. Allan Leinwand // CTO @ WebflowLeveraging Your Tech Knowledge as CTO: Staying Hands-On and Readying for IPO
Embrace the technical side 🔧 of the CTO role with Allan Leinwand, CTO of Webflow 🖱️ who has combined technical know-how with great products on every layer of the OSI Model: from setting up HP’s first ethernet, CISCO’s early networks, building the world’s first CDN at Digital Island, and continuing up the stack to enterprise cloud ☁️ (ServiceNow), social gaming 🎮 (zynga), communications 💬 (Slack), eCommerce 🛒 (Shopify) and now webdesign 🎨(Webflow).
Listen to find out;
Why deep technical knowledge 🧠 allows better products
How a monolith can combine individual code ownership and...2024-01-1852 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#92 - Manage yourself to better manage others feat. Johanna Rothman // The Pragmatic ManagerSelf Management for CTOs and other Managers
Want to become a better manager? Then manage yourself better!
From managing the time you spend managing, and all the way to managing how you give your team new tasks…
Let's get real with Johanna Rothman, whom they don’t call the Pragmatic Manager for nothing. You will love her straight-talking approach to management. After almost 40 years in management, she can boil down things to sharp principles that will make you either hand pump💯, shoot the link to your buddy🤣… or smile sheepishly🫣. Yip, she got you. (Don’t worry, we won’t...2024-01-0457 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#91 - Autonomous Teams: Why, How and Who with Andy Walker // Former Senior Tech Leader @ Skyscanner + GoogleAutonomy, Motivation and Purpose
Empower your team with the right type of autonomy 🚀 as we define the balance in this CTO podcast with Andy Walker, who has years of experience leadings teams at Skyscanner and Google. After 30 years in tech, Andy finally has the time to share what his hard won insights about tech leadership. You will enjoy his nuanced approach to autonomous teams, team size and work-life balance.
Listen to find out:
Why the more senior you are, the less decisions you should make 🤔
How to give the right amount of autonomy by career stage 🧑💻 (and how to have the ri...2023-12-1446 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#90 - Bob Moesta // Co-Architect of the "Jobs to Be Done" TheoryProduct Discovery for Engineers (and CTOs)
Invest your engineering resources better by truly understanding the core problem your product needs to solve with this CTO podcast featuring Bob Moesta, co-architect of the Jobs to be Done Theory, who has developed and launched over 3500 products.
As an engineer-turned-product-guru, Bob’s explanation of Product Discovery will delight your nerd brain 🧠 (complete with references to set theory, push-pull forces, and the problem space) while being super practical 🔧about the challenges CTOs are dealing with (like scope creep and trade offs).
Listen to find out:
Why “Build and They Will Come” is a Myth 🫣
...2023-11-3046 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#89 - Melissa Perri // Author of "Escaping the Build Trap" and "Product Operations"CTOs Guide to Product Strategy and ProductOps
Craft the ideal product strategy in this CTO podcast episode with Melissa Perri, author of “Escaping the Build Trap” and “Product Operations”.Find out how to become truly product-led: from your strategy to your metrics to your tooling.
Listen to find out:
How to balance qualitative 😍 and quantitative data 🧪 in product
Were the mass layoffs caused by overhiring? 🫠Is it a natural part of growth or can companies avoid over scaling?
What does the ideal product strategy 🎯look like?
What is ProductOps⚙️ and why you need it
+ how to handle your fellow exec’s "greatest...2023-11-161h 07
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#88 - Luca Rossi // Creator @ refactoring.club 🌀Time Management + Continuous Learning Tips for CTO
Stay on top of your professional development with these learning and productivity tips from Luca Rossi, whose refactoring.club newsletter 🌀 is read by 50k subscribers every week. After scaling Wanderio to 25M users 🚀 as founding CTO, Luca sat down to distill his experiences and in the process created the tech leadership content 📰 he so badly needed. With diagrams. 🖼️ In this alphalist CTO podcast, Luca shares what he has learned about leadership - including the self-leadership needed to structure one's time and effectively harvest the plethora of ideas published online into action.
Listen to find...2023-11-0251 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#87 - Scott Chacon // Co-founder of GitHub and GitButlerThe Future of Version Control Systems
Reimagine version control systems with Scott Chacon, Co-founder of GitHub and GitButler.
Because, even Scott, a Git Veteran, will admit it:
Git is a pain sometimes. 🫣
There is a serious Merge Conflict ⚔️ between how modern developers code and the workflow ordained by Git in the Linux mailing list days.
Version Control Systems (VCS) need to be taken apart by First Principles 🧩 so they can be better adapted to the needs of modern software teams. And this is the branch he is busy with at GitButler 🔧 - which he invited us to checkout...2023-10-1951 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#86 - Leading Through A Layoff // feat. Mike Fisher - Former CTO @ EtsyLeading Through A LayOff: How to downsize nicely
Is there a nice way to downsize? Mike Fisher, former CTO of Etsy, shares what he learned when the company downscaled by 27% in 2 rounds of layoffs right before he joined. Find out how you can help your team navigate this sensitive period - both pre- and post-layoff.
How much time⏳ you lose in a layoff (the productivity cost of layoff)
Why you can’t expect to cut costs ✂️ AND grow
Why Availability 🟢 needs to be prioritised as you downsize
Layoffing off Generalists vs. Specialists 🧑🔬
How they migrated to the cloud ☁️
Listen here
BROUGHT TO...2023-10-0543 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#85 - Thomas Dohmke // CEO @ GitHubThe AI-Driven Future of Software Development, Scaling, and the Open Source
git checkout the future of software development with Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub. This broad podcast discusses everything from refactoring and scaling to the CTO/CEO role, from open source to AI as a Dev Tool. Every day Thomas delves into the development of software development - so his 🧠 was a great brain to pick.
Listen to find out:
Why refactoring 🧩 will always be a part of growth (but AI will help)
What was it like being integrated ☂️ into Microsoft post-M&A
What are GitHub’s current ch...2023-09-2154 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#84 - Abi Noda // Co-Creator of the DevEx Metrics FrameworkDX: The Developer Metrics that Unlock Developer Productivity
Find out the best way to measure Developer Experience 🧑💻in a way that truly enables ⚡ your developers (i.e. Developer Productivity) in this CTO podcast with Abi Noda - co-creator of the DevEx Framework and founder of Pull Panda. For years Abi has been on a quest to discover what developer metrics are the key to happier and more productive developers. He tried PR Analytics (he created Pull Panda🐼 - acquired by GitHub) and DORA, before teaming up with other Developer Productivity researchers 🧑🔬 to create a new framework which focuses on improving developer e...2023-09-0751 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#83 - Aviran Mordo // VP Engineering @ WixThe Wix Guild model, Mentorship and Platform-as-a- Runtime
Get inspired about architecture - that of computers and teams - in this CTO podcast with Aviran Mordo, VP Engineering at Wix. I really enjoyed talking with Aviran about both the technical nitty gritty of powering millions of websites as well as the Wix model which - unlike the Spotify model - is still in use at its flagship company over a decade later
Listen to find out:
How the Wix model works 🪗(+ hiring, personal development and communication across guilds and companies)
What is Platform-as-a-Runtime 🚄
Why most microservices 🪢 are done wrong (an...2023-08-251h 06
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#82 - Gertrud Kolb // CTO @ EyeoHow to restructure a large tech and product organisation
Find out how to restructure your org using a matrix structure with Gertrud Kolb, CTO of eyeo (the company behind common adblockers). You will find out how Gertrud implemented changes across an already large organisation - from the team typologies to team communications.
Listen to find out:
How to restructure using team topology 🧩best practices in a large organisation.
How to improve requirements engineering ✅
How to gradually consolidate team communications 💬
How ad-blockers are working advertisers to enable privacy-friendly 🎯 targeting
Behind-the-scenes at the world’s most popular adblocker
Listen here
--
B...2023-08-1058 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#81 - Teresa Torres // Author of 'Continuous Discovery Habits'How to do continuous product discovery sustainably and as a team
Find out how to do continuous product discovery with Teresa Torres who has taught over 12,000 people how to sustainably infuse their daily product decisions with customer input. You will find out why product should not be just a job title, but a mindset that the entire C-suite needs to share.
Listen to find out:
What is an outcome-orientated mindset? Do we need OKRs?✅
How to build a continuous feedback loop with customers 🪢
Business success 👔 vs product discovery success 🫶
What mistakes people make with product discovery 🕵️
The pitfalls of...2023-07-2747 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#80 - Sarah Polan // Field CTO @ HashicorpPlatform Engineering 101: Why you need it and how to do it
Find out how to use platform engineering to scale your DevOps 🚀with this hands-on podcast with Sarah Polan, Field CTO at HashiCorp. Sarah is passionate about 2 things: DevSecOps 🔏 and automating everything 🔁 (she even automates aspects of her childcare :)). Which is why this podcast episode is all about scalability 📈 - from attrition-proof DevOps to automated audits. This is a must-listen podcast for both CTOs who are new to Platform Engineering as well as those who are troubleshooting from the trenches.
Listen to find out:
Why do we need platform eng...2023-07-1343 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#79 - Dr. Steven Rogelberg // Author of "Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings"How to Have Effective One-on-One (1:1) Meetings as a CTO
Did you know that effective 1:1s will 3X your employee engagement? 🤩
Maximise your 1:1 meetings 🤝 by leveraging the meeting science discovered by Steven Rogelberg (Chancellor's Professor at UNC Charlotte and author of 2 top-ranked books about meeting science: “The Surprising Science of Meetings” and “Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings”). As an organisational psychologist 🧑🔬who has advised US Congress 🏛️and Fortune100 companies on workplace matters, Steven is here to share with CTOs the evidence-based 🧐 science that will not only maximise meetings, but also realise their full potential🚀.
Listen to find out:
How can we realise...2023-06-2930 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#78 - Stephen Wolfram // Founder & CEO of Wolfram ResearchComputational Thinking, LUIs and the AI-assisted Coding of the Future
_ It is time to stop learning the computer’s programming language, and get computers to learn our language.
_Prepare think different - or should we say alien 👾 - in this CTO podcast with Stephen Wolfram (Founder & CEO of Wolfram Research). Find out why we need to use computational thinking to create code in a way humans can both write ✍️ and read 📖.
Listen to find out:
What is the programming workflow of the future? 🔮 (SPOILER: Think NLU + LLM + computational layer)
What is a LUI (Linguistic User Interface) 💬?
Why should you make your comp...2023-06-151h 18
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#77 - Vikas Gupta // CTO @ ChocoHow to focus on business value in tech
Find out how to use tech to deliver (not distract from) business value in this CTO podcast featuring Vikas Gupta, CTO at Choco (a digital platform connecting suppliers to their restaurants), who previously held senior engineering roles at Uber and Dropbox.
Listen find out :
⚖️ How to balance product and platform initiatives
🔍What the 5 dimensions are for evaluating a language
🎩 CTPO vs 👷CTO + 🤠CPO
How to determine ROI when migrating from legacy
+ Why he chose his tech stack
Listen here
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BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Sastrify
Sastrify i...2023-06-0151 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#76 - Richard Socher // CEO @ You.comHow AI will impact search, coding, digital marketing, jobs and more
Get a handle on the latest developments in AI 🤩 in this CTO Podcast featuring Richard Socher, CEO of You.com (the world’s first AI- centric chat-based 💬 search engine). This is your opportunity to learn from the AI professor 🎓who co-authored the paper that introduced the term ‘prompt engineering’, created MetaMind 🧠(now powering Einstein at Salesforce) and pioneered many of the technologies everyone is hyping about today. But for Richard, its not hype. Its just the fusion of technology and business that he has been working on for years.
Listen to...2023-05-2258 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#74 - Shawn 'swyx' Wang // Developer Experience ExpertHow to use generative AI as a DevTool
Dig deep into how to use generative AI as developer tool 🧑💻in this CTO podcast featuring Shawn ‘Swyx’ Wang. Shawn has not only headed Developer Experience at 3 Unicorns 🦄, but he is also the editor of the Latent Space AI/ML newsletter. Tune in to discover how generative AI will change programming and how to start exploring the world of LLMs.
Learn:
How our infrastructure 🏗️ needs will evolve with the explosion of the AI frontier
How much time a CTO should spend trying out new technology vs. sticking with the tried and true ⚖...2023-04-1448 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#73 Will Larson // Thought Leader @ Irrational Exuberance (lethain)How to find the ideal CTO Role in 2023: Location, Stage, Domain, Culture and Red Flags
Focus on your CTO career in this podcast with Will Larson about leaving a CTO role, finding a new CTO role, and negotiating your compensation. Will is the thought leader behind the popular blog "Irrational Exuberance" and the book "An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management" and "Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track". Additionally, he is the former CTO of Calm who has also led teams at Uber, Digg, and Yahoo.
Listen to find out:
How to find 🔍 the ideal CTO Role in...2023-03-301h 01
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#72 - Kent C. Dodds // Co-Founder of RemixRevolutionizing Web Architecture: PESPA - The Future of Single Page Apps
Like the UX of a SPA but developing it is a nightmare🤔?
Then you should listen to this podcast about PESPA (Progressively Enhanced Single Page apps.🤩. You will learn from Kent C. Dodds, 💁♂️co-founder of Remix about this latest web architecture which combines the UX of a SPA (no full-page refreshes 🔄 with a better DX👨💻 (no code duplication and less mess). With companies like Microsoft, Netflix, and LinkedIn incorporating it into their stack - it's the web’s next transition which you don’t want to miss out on.
Listen to discover...2023-03-1758 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#70 - Dominik Angerer // Cofounder and CEO @ StoryblokRemote First 101: Hiring, Compensation, IT Provisioning, Onboarding, Culture and More
Learn out to run your remote 🌎 company effectively with tips from Dominik Angerer, co-founder, and CEO of Storyblok. He shares tips and insights on everything from remote recruiting to onboarding and engagement. Plus, he shares the story behind the Storyblok tech stack, and why, after years of being bootstrapped, they decided to seek funding.
Listen to find out:
Remote Compensation 💸: How he uses data to adjust salaries
How to handle IT procurement 🖥️ and device management for a global team
How to source, recruit, and onboard a fully distr...2023-02-1651 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#69 - David Linthicum // Chief Cloud Strategy Office @ Deloitte ConsultingHow to Optimise your Cloud Costs
Find out how to optimize your cloud ☁️costs in this CTO podcast featuring David Linthicum (Chief Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte, Author of Insider’s Guide to Cloud Computing, and #1 Cloud Influencer).
This is your opportunity to hear about the efficient use of cloud computing from someone whose 35-year career includes serving as CTO at five companies, writing 15 books, publishing 7000 articles, presenting at 1000 conferences and 2000 webinars, and teaching popular courses on computing at Louisiana State University and LinkedIn Learning.
Listen to find out:
What are the biggest mistakes people make with t...2023-02-0256 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#68 - Patrick Campbell // Founder & CEO @ ProfitWellSaaS Pricing Strategies
Find out how to price your SaaS product effectively 💸 in this podcast featuring Patrick Campbell of ProfitWell (a SaaS for subscription analytics, retention, and pricing solutions). He shares pricing insights he has learned by looking over 🧐 the data of 73 000 SaaS companies over the past decade!
Listen to find out:
How to get the right 🎯price for your SaaS Product
Freemium 🆓 or free trial?
Should you have a legacy 👴🏻 tier?
Usage-based 📈 or tier-based 📊 pricing? 🤔
Why and how to change your price? 🔼
Insight into the current ‘recession’ 📉
Why it’s hard to sell an analytics product 🔍
Listen here
BROUGH...2023-01-191h 08
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#67 - Renaud Visage // Co-Founder & ex-CTO @ EventbriteFrom Bootstrapping through Recession to Climate-Friendly Tech: CTO Insights for the Modern Era
Find out how to bootstrap and scale fast in this CTO podcast featuring Renaud Visage - Co-Founder & ex-CTO at Eventbrite🎟. He shares what he would do differently if he would bootstrap Eventbrite again, his approach to the evolving role of the founding CTO, and climate-friendly tech.
Listen to find out:
Bootstrapping: Why you should hire senior devs 👨💻 as soon as possible
Cloud☁️ vs. On-Prem⚙️
How recession📉 will change the start-up ecosystem
Climate + Tech: How to factor in climate♻️ to our tech
How to embrace your evolving role...2023-01-0554 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#65 - Ryan Singer // Creator of the Shape Up MethodHow to ship meaningful products on time with the Shape Up Method
Find out how to ship meaningful products 👍 on time ⌛ with proper product shaping in this CTO podcast with Ryan Singer, the creator of the Shape Up Method 💪. The Shape Up Method aims to better define and prioritise 🤔 projects before they are sent to be built and shipped.
Listen to find out:
How to timebox effectively 📅 (SPOILER: Its not 2 or 6 weeks)
Why tickets don’t work 🎫
What is the ideal team composition 🎨 for each phase of the project.
Why he doesn’t give specific instructions for the build phase 🏗️...2022-12-081h 09
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#64 - Carlo Szelinsky // Co-CEO & Founder @ applike GroupTechnology first: The science behind building successful global app and game business.
Find out how to build a profitable mobile app or game 📱in this CTO podcast featuring Carlo Szelinsky, Co-CEO & Founder @ applike group. The applike group brings in $100M+ ARR through their apps and games and now also offers tech solutions for app creators. Listen to this podcast for a step by-step-guide to mobile apps: from performance marketing attribution to in-app analytics technology and everything you need to know about monetizing your app.
Listen to find out:
How to do attribution 🧐 well in 2023 (and how to deal with c...2022-11-2552 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#63 - Aron Spohr // CTO @ FlaschenpostLogistics, Tech, and Groceries
Discover how Flaschenpost uses tech to deliver groceries within two hours ⏳ in this CTO podcast featuring Aron Spohr, CTO @ Flaschenpost - a grocery delivery service. 🍏🍞🥚🥫
Listen to find out:
Why boring 🥱 is good in a tech stack (SPOILER: They run their ecommerce 🛒 site in .NET and C# )
Why they went with a hybrid approach (web container + native SPA) to apps
Why they now buy before they build 🛠️
How he hacked Deutsche Telekom 📶 at age 16
Listen here
BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
OfferZen
OfferZen)
Accelerate your developer hiring with OfferZen, a community-first...2022-11-1054 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#62 - Maria Meier // CTO @ Phantasma LabsCreating Simulators for the Reinforcement Learning of Autonomous Vehicles
Get insight into the world of reinforcement learning in this CTO podcast with Maria Meier CTO @ Phantasma Labs (a Simulation-a-a-Service). Maria shares with us how the simulation industry🔮 is developing - particularly in the autonomous vehicle context.
Listen to find out:
Why reinforcement learning 🍭 is about to catch up to the other 2 ML paradigms
Why we need to model diversity in AI 👩🦽👴🧒🌍 - especially when simulating urban pedestrian traffic.
How much progress the autonomous vehicle industry 🚘 has made towards Level 5.
How standardisation 📜 is unfolding in ML
Listen here2022-10-2745 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#61 - Bjarne Stroustrup // Creator of C++The Past, Present and Future of C++
Come to a new appreciation of the code that powers most of the hardware you interact with in this CTO podcast featuring Bjarne Stroustrup - Creator of C++.
Join us as we discuss the past, present, and future of C++ - a language used in everything from ATMs 🏧 to rocketships 🚀.
Listen to find out:
Why we need to differentiate between coding 👨💻 and programming ⚒️
Why he doesn’t want to start C++ from scratch ❇️
The challenges of maintaining 🏗️ a language used by millions of people
How C++ 💪 trumps other languages in efficiency
Listen here
BROUGHT TO...2022-10-1359 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#60 - Yonatan Zunger // Creator of the WXZ Layers of the System ApproachEthical Engineering + Reliable Scalable Architecture
Discover new ways to think about ethical engineering 😇 and technical architecture 🏗️ in this CTO podcast featuring Yonatan Zunger, Creator of WXZ Layers of System Approach and Distinguished Engineer at Twitter.
This is your opportunity to hear from someone whose architectural philosophy is inspiring companies like Github.
Listen to find out:
How to build a multi-layer 🍰 architecture (WXZ) that gives a reliable way to test ideas out.
Why we need to consider ethics and privacy in everything from UI 🖱️ to AI 🤖
What the IC track 🧑💻looks like (titles and roles)
What 4 skills 🧠 every project needs
Liste...2022-09-291h 02
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#59 - Andreas Wixler // CTO @ FINNHow to Scale a Start Up with No Code + Low Code + Hard Code
Find out how to be more efficient by using a mix of no-code, low-code and hard-code in your tech stack in this practical CTO podcast episode featuring Andreas Wixler, the CTO of FINN 🚙.
Listen to find out:
When, why and how to migrate ➡️ your core business code from no-code to hard-code
How to test and document an API-first set up
How to get the entire company automating ⚙️ processes in no-code
How to navigate no-code and low-code limits ⚠️
Listen here
BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
ROQ...2022-09-1543 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#58 - Uncle Bob Martin // The Clean Coder Behind Test Driven Development, SOLID Principles and the Agile ManifestoSoftware Architecture in 2022
Get clarity on how to build great software in 2022 in a world exploding with methodologies and languages with the legendary software craftsman Uncle Bob Martin. The Clean Coder ✨is known for Test Driven Development ✅ and his contribution to SOLID 🧰 and the Agile Manifesto 📜 and he is here to share how to incorporate it into a professional setup.
Listen to find out:
How to do Technical Debt ⚖️ the right way.
Why your hiring 📜 should be language-agnostic 💬
Why pair programming 🤼🏻 is better than code reviews
How Agile 🎛️ came about
the 🔮 Future of Software
With over 60 years of experience and ma...2022-09-0148 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#57 - Kathryn Koehler // Director, Developer Productivity Engineering @ NetflixImplementing the Right Internal Tooling for Developer Productivity
Find out what it takes to enable developer productivity in a highly autonomous environment 💪 like Netflix where there are no rules ✌️- only trust and accountability .
Kathryn Koehler, Director of Developer Productivity Engineering @ Netflix shares insight into lean teams, internal tooling, and yes, developer productivity.
Listen to find out:
How to decide between Build 🛠vs Buy 🛒 in internal tooling
How to measure 📏developer productivity (SPACE vs NPS vs DORA)
How to support developer’s choice in language 💬(context vs. control)
Why the ideal team 👥 size is n-1
+ Why she never says she is ‘b...2022-08-1856 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#56 - Ken Coleman // America’s Career Coach & Ramsey PersonalityHow To Attract, Retain and Engage Tech Talent
Learn how to be the CTO that everyone wants to work for by listening to this talk by Ken Coleman. Known as America’s Career Coach, this Ramsey Personality is also the bestselling author of books like ‘From Paycheck to Purpose’, ‘Proximity Principle’, and more. Discover the winning recipe you need to attract and retain talent in today’s market from someone who has spoken to over 5000 people live-on-air who are looking to leave or join leaders. Plus, find out how to hone your servant-leadership skills by asking your team the right questi...2022-08-0450 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#55 - Rachel Potvin // VP Engineering @ GithubTips on Developer Productivity for Rapidly Scaling Teams
Find out how to maintain developer productivity 🧑💻 in a fast scaling team in this CTO podcast featuring Rachel Potvin, VP Engineering at GitHub (formerly of Google and Ubisoft). She shares how GitHub uses things like fan-out processes, design reviews, and DevSat surveys to stay on track even as the team 3Xed💥.
Listen to find out:
Why you should focus on team 👥 productivity metrics (+which ones)
How they are using the ‘Layers of the System’ 🍔 approach to work out GitHub’s future architecture 🏛️ (SPOILER: It might not be entirely monolithic forever)
How they...2022-07-2154 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#54 - Cal Henderson // CTO @ SlackCal Henderson, CTO of Slack, creator of Flickr, and author of ‘Building Scalable Websites’ (O'Reilly Media, 2006) shares how Slack was built from both a tech and product perspective and what you should be doing to reclaim your focus time ⏱️.
You don’t want to miss out on hearing about the Slack tech stack from someone who is a pioneer in the use of web APIs and created the basis for OAuth and oEmbed.
Listen to find out:
>> How Slack does focus time
>> What tech stack👩💻 powers Slack across platforms
>> Why Twitter 🐦 has allowed for better products to be created
+ why you need to disconnec...2022-06-2350 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#53 - Mikko Hypponen // Chief Research Officer @ WithSecureOpen Source Vulnerabilities; Cybersecurity in the Russian/Ukrainian conflict and AI-aided cyberattacks
Find out what is new in the world of cybersecurity in this CTO podcast featuring cybersecurity expert Mikko Hypponen, the originator of Hypponen's Law (if it's smart📲, it's vulnerable😨) and Europol 🇪🇺 board member.
Tune in to hear what he has to say as an expert with more than 30 years of experience in protecting users’ cyber security and privacy.
Listen to find out:
Why you should see open source vulnerabilities as a supply chain problem (and why it's your job to contribute an audit 🧐).
How Bitcoin makes a g...2022-06-1041 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#52 - Oren Etzioni // CEO of Allen Institute for AIOpportunities in AI, Computer VIsion and NLP.
I spoke with Oren Etzioni - CEO of Allen Institute for AI (a leading AI research institute). Get an insight into what's new in the world of AI from the person whose company's incubated startups worth $300 million+ and released a number of AI tools and technologies.
Listen to find out:
How to get the scientists 🧪 and engineers 🔧on your team to work together
What opportunities await you 🦸 in the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence?
What is going to be the next big thing in the world of AI🧠, computer vision👁️ and...2022-05-2743 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#51 - Eben Upton // Co-founder & CEO of Raspberry Pi LtdThe Ins and Outs of the Semi-Conductor and Hardware Industry
Eben Upton, Co-founder & CEO of Raspberry 🍓 Pi Ltd Foundation (which produces low-cost, high-performance Raspberry Pi single-board computers and microcontrollers for kids - and adults) shares what it’s like to build hardware that makes computing accessible to more people (Did you know that some components are camera shy 📸??). In the past decade, they have made 45 million Raspberry Pis while improving on the original’s performance 40X!!!
Learn top tips about building great hardware (it is called hard for a reason) and why you need 10 domain experts, $1 million dollars, and a risk app...2022-05-1356 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#50 - Niilo Säämänen // CTO at WoltHow to Build Impact Driven Organisations (autonomy + ownership + accountability)
Niilo Säämänen, CTO of Wolt (best known for their delivery platform) ⚡, shares how he leads an engineering organisation of 40+ autonomous product teams through hyper-growth to serve millions of customers across 23 countries 🚀.
Learn how to structure your team and product across domains, platforms, and countries while putting employee satisfaction at the forefront of your work ⭐. You’re bound to learn a thing or two from his unique approach to building impact-driven tech organisations built on autonomy, ownership and accountability 💪.
Listen to find out:
How to build & main...2022-04-2855 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#49 - Mike Perham // Creator of SidekiqHow to build sustainable open source projects by commercialising them
Mike Perham, the creator of Sidekiq 🦵🏼 (a background job managers for Ruby) shares how he commercialised the open-source as a solopreneur doing what he loves 💙 without the costs & management headaches 🤦 of a team or the pressures of a VC investment.
Discover tips for building sustainable software (e.g. minimise dependencies) and choosing the right business model that enables you to support and maintain your software for years to come.
Listen to find out::
How to get to $4M ARR with 20% YoY growth by creating a helpful add-on ➕ to...2022-04-1453 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#48 - Michael Kagan // CTO at NvidiaInsight Into the World of Innovative Computing
Michael Kagan, the CTO of computing giant Nvidia and co-founder of Mellanox shares insight into the world of hardware, software, AI, and of course computing.
Listen to find out:
Why you should ditch deep hierarchy and allow those close to the product to make the decisions. 🧑⚖️
The benefits of working with inexperienced engineers 🐤
How to retain employees by hiring them every day 😃.
Why instead of fighting for a bigger slice of pie 🍰 - we should just bake a bigger pie
Listen Here
BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
Sastrifyand Deazy...2022-03-3145 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#47 - Daniel Krauss // CIO & Founder at FlixMobilityHow to Restructure Your Tech and Org as You Scale
I spoke with Daniel Krauss, the Chief Organisational Plumber at FlixBus - a leading Mobility-as-a-Service 🚍🚆.
Learn how to grow a company from a ‘fastest-shippable-product monolith’🙃 to a neat ‘independent service’ architecture 😀 with ‘Team Self Design’ events, empowered teams & domain-orientated org structure.
Listen to find out:
How to push technological innovation in a highly-regulated industry⛔ (and its limits).
How to adapt your tech architecture and organizational structure of your product as you scale ⇗
Why you should never compromise on hiring the best 💪 engineers.
How he chose FlixBus tech stack
...2022-03-1747 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#45 - David Heinemeier Hansson // Ruby on Rails Creator and CTO at Basecamp and HeyThe Benefits of Remote, Bootstrapping, Small Teams and Skipping Product Discovery 🤯
David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of Basecamp and Hey and creator of Ruby-on-Rails💎 blows us away yet again in this thought-provoking podcast 🤯 about bootstrapping, scaling, remote work, and of course Ruby on Rails.
Learn insights into technical leadership from someone who has been leading a remote team since 2004 (hint: You are doing Slack and Zoom wrong), believes in async work, and loves the fact that his company doesn’t have an office 🏢. Plus, after 20 years of creating multi-million dollar SaaS products - he just made his first middle managem...2022-02-171h 42
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#40 - Marco Palladino // CTO KongHow to Build an API, how to commercialise an open-source project & the evolving CTO role
I spoke with Marco Palladino, Co-Founder & CTO at Kong 🐒, the market-leading API management gateway Solution.
Learn deep insight into APIs, the future of the API Economy, and what it takes to build a great API from someone who has been involved in the API industry since its infancy.
Listen to find out:
How to build an API for each use case (external, microservice & mobile).
Why it's only the beginning of the API economy 💹
Why the best infrastructure software has its roots in the...2021-12-0944 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#39 - Chad Fowler // CTO, Musician, Author and VCMusic, Microservices and a New Way To Learn Coding
Chad Fowler - an engineer, musician, and author - transformed Wunderlist 📋 from a messy monolith to a neat multi-language microservice.
Be inspired by his unique view on technology stemming from his background as a musician 🎵 and RPG player 🎮.
Open your mind 🤯and prepare to reevaluate 🤔after you hear from this creative thinker who -in the course of his 25-year career - has worked as both a coder and manager at both startups and enterprise companies in the US 🇺🇸, EU 🇪🇺 and India 🇮🇳.
Listen to find out:
Why we should rethink h...2021-11-261h 15
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#38 - Sagnik Nandy // CTO OktaIdentity Management, User Rearch, and Building Scalable Products
I spoke with Sagnik Nandy, CTO & President of Technology at Okta, the market leading IAM Solution 🔐. Discover deep insight into the world of identity management🆔, user feedback 👥, and why the best products provide a simplified interface to a complex solution (with customizability ⚙️ for advanced users).
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to hear how to build scalable products ♾️ from someone who scaled and led Google Analytics 📊 and Google Ad 💸 products/
Listen to find out:
Why you need to build for both expansion 📈 and deprecation 📉
The need for a passwordless future 🔏
The cha...2021-11-111h 03
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#37 - Fabian Wesner // Founder ROQWhat it takes to build a FaaS; a multinational, cross-industry shop system and which languages for a webapp)
I spoke with Fabian Wesner, Founder at ROQ, a FaaS (Feature-as-a-Service) for web applications. Learn deep insight into the world of web applications and frameworks from someone who had to launch an eCommerce shop each week (in different countries 🇧🇷 🇦🇺 🇯🇵 and industries!👗🛏️🧸). Fabian, as former Rocket Internet CTO and Spryker Co-Founder and CTO is the hidden gem of the German CTO scene.
Listen to find out:
How working in the “Samwer sweatshop” felt
Node vs Ruby vs PHP for a modern web app
Why “keeping you...2021-10-291h 20
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#34 - Mark Porter // CTO MongoDBBuilding an internal culture, Running a product rooted in the Open Source and more
I spoke with Mark Porter, CTO at MongoDB. His 40 year career spans time working at companies like Oracle, AWS and Grab. He shares with us insights into technical leadership, company culture and the open-source world,
Listen to find out
Where DEI initiatives fail〽️
Why they don’t use OKRs 📏 at MongoDB
How to Build a Product around the Open Source 👥
+How being a parent makes him a better manager
Listen here or read related blog post about how to build an internal culture.
BROUGHT TO Y...2021-09-0947 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#33 - Andreas Schranzhofer // CTO Scalable CapitalHow to Secure your App
I spoke with Andreas Schranzhofer, CTO of Scalable Capital about the best ways to secure an app. Scalable Capital is a Neo-Broker and robo-advisor based in Munich with over 250 million in funding.
Learn about app security from someone highly experienced in running an app in the highly regulated FinTech 💰 industry.
Learn:
Why you need both security and obfuscation 🛡️
How to prevent Supply Chain and Ransomware attacks 🦹🤑
What external tools he uses in the Software Development Cycle 🛠️
BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Okta and Fastly
Okta
This episode is kindly sponsored by O...2021-08-2753 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#32 - Charity Majors // CTO HoneyCombTesting in Production, Getting Rid of Hierarchy and other Thoughts on Socio-Technical Leadership
I spoke with Charity Majors, CTO of HoneyComb, prolific Twitter user, and blogger. WHO TESTS IN PRODUCTION. 😱 And is proud of it. She also shares her insight into socio-technical leadership, observability, and databases.
Learn:
The importance of a tight feedback loop 🔁
Why the maximum deploy time should be 15 minutes. 🕒🚀
How microservices make engineers jobs harder😓
Why she wants to do away with hierarchies to increase job satisfaction 😀
BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Fastly and Okta
Fastly
This episode is again kindly supported by Fastly, the big...2021-08-1248 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#31 - Alex Solomon // CTO PagerDutyAIOps and the Future of DevOps
‘PagerDuty raises 90 million to wake up more engineers in the middle of the night.’ read a recent headline. Highlighting both the recent funding and also its unpopular but necessary job. However, Alex Solomon of PagerDuty is working on making the DevOps world more efficient with on-call-management, AIOps, and automating routine debugging tasks.
He shares with us about:
On-Call Management: The only notifications 🔔 that provide a better Work/Life Balance
How AIOps and Runbook Automation 🤖are the future of DevOps (+other trends)
Partner vs Compete: Why they became an ecosystem
How he grew his B2B Sa...2021-07-2946 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#30 - Cheryl Hung //VP Ecosystem of CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation]Cloud Native Technologies: Edge Computing, Kubernetes, Containers and Open Source
We spoke with Cheryl Hung of Cloud Native. She runs the ecosystem of over 600 members contributing to over a hundred open source projects. She also started the Cloud Native London meetup where she promotes developer advocacy and diversity. As an early adopter of kubernetes, she has a lot to share!
Cheryl shared with us:
The importance of Developer Advocacy 👩💻
How Edge Computing is the next frontier in Cloud Native ☁️
Why kubernetes is not for everyone 📦and has to become easier
Why End-User companies should contribute to the Open Source 🆓
Her ch...2021-07-151h 02
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#29 - Matthias Jugel // Co-Founder of UBIRCHEU vaccination passes and other uses of crypto and blockchain for verification
We spoke to Matthias Jugel, the co-founder of ubirch, the company behind the 🇩🇪 German digital vaccination passes 💉His technology has generated over 30 million vaccine passes giving Germans their summer holidays back! And they launched in a matter of weeks!
We discussed
What was involved in creating digital vaccine passports that worked OFFLINE and allow movement around the EU 🇪🇺
Blockchain verification ✔️ and its applications in pharmaceuticals⚕️, car insurance 🚘 and manufacturing 🏭
what he learnt from launching a national program in less than a month! 📆
Listen on Apple: || Spotify: || Deezer
BROUG...2021-07-0144 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#28 - Rasmus Rothe // founder of MerantixAI trends and applications
We spoke to Rasmus Roth, leader in AI space- he has 5 products just based on machine learning.
What is involved in productising and commercialising a machine learning-based service 📈➡️💰
The need for ML ops 👨💻
Google Cloud vs AWS vs Azure and why he doesn’t stick to one ☁️
AI and its applications in medical field ⚕️, autonomous driving 🚘and BI 📊
His go-to resources for libraries, ML ops and conferences
BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
Fastly and Sastrify
Fastly
This episode is again kindly supported by Fastly, the biggest challenger in the CDN market and a solution I personally use.
Fastl...2021-06-1750 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#27 - Eric Johnson // CTO GitLabSuccessfully managing remote companies
I had the chance to talk to Eric Johnson, the CTO of GitLab about
How to manage remote teams: async, stand-ups, onboarding, burn out, internships, compensation, and more
How Gitlab uses git for everything from Marketing to Policy
The difference between servant-leadership and situational leadership and when to use what
A message to those who think parenthood might take away from their career
If you loved his straight-talking ReadMe about himself, you will also like this thought-provoking episode on leadership, management, and of course remote work from someone who manages a completely remote...2021-06-031h 09alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#26 - John Romero // CEO Romero Games
This Podcast episode is DOOMed 🔥🌋😈🧟🕯👿☠👹🦹
I had the chance to talk to John Romero, the inventor of DOOM, Wolfenstein and Commander Keen and founder of id Software about
Developing games in the early 90s and how they developed DOOM in a crazy small team
Developing games in 2021 and how it’s still possible to develop games with only a single person team
The crazy amounts of money they made with DOOM 🤑💶🤑
The crazy amounts of energy drinks they consumed
Why not he would not start developing a game engine again
Thanks a lot John! Was really fun talking to you.2021-05-2052 minalphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#25 - Tim O'Reilly // Founder & CEO O'Reilly MediaThe Oracle of the Silicon Valley
Today with me in the Podcast is Tim O'Reilly, the Founder & CEO of O'Reilly Media and boy, his 1,5 million
twitter followers are there for a reason!
People call him "the Oracle of the Silicon Valley", he came up with the term "Web 2.0" - This man is crazy a wizard!
We spoke about:
Writing as superpower! How it helps you to structure your thoughts.
How he started OSCON and great nerdy 90s
The big tectonic "Platform changes" and how the giants use "Algorithmic Rents" to silently put more money
...2021-05-061h 22alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#23 - Olivier Bonnet // CTO BlaBlaCar
This time I had Olivier Bonnet, the CTO of BlaBlaCar in the podcast.
BlaBlaCar is the carpooling company: They own the market.
They are active in 22 Countries, have 100M+ Users and acquired 12 other carpooling companies.
Olivier, the CTO, joined me to talk about:
How his time at Apple taught him to think long term
100 million users, 12 acquisitions: The strategy behind BlaCar
The complexity of route planning 🌐
How writing 🖊️ helps people at Bla to structure their thoughts: They are writing press releases for new features, Amazon style.
You build it, you run it! How technology decision discipline works at BlaCar
2021-04-081h 11alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#19 - Mitchell Hashimoto // CTO HashiCorp
This time I'm talking to an absolute legend: Mitchell Hashimoto, the CTO of HashiCorp the company behind a series
of brilliant open source products (Terraform, Vault, Nomad, Vagrant) that are highly successfully both business wise and community wise.
I would even argue that HashiCorp is the only company that manages to do that.
We talk about:
The path from 7 to 1000+ employees in the last 10 years 📈📈📈
How Mitch is still able to be a very active github user and contribute a lot of code while growing a big enterprise company to IPO
How to build successful open source pr...2021-02-1147 minalphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#18 - Jean-Denis Greze // Head of Engineering at Plaid
Podcast time! In this episode I'm chatting with Jean-Denis Greze, the Head of Engineering @ Plaid and former Director of Engineering at Dropbox.
Plaid is a fintech Unicorn from the US that just turned down an acquisition by Visa.
We spoke about:
The upcoming topic 🔒 Privacy Engineering 🔒 and how it will change our thinking
How plaid handles 1000s of connections to banks and integrates with a lot of legacy APIs just fine
His thoughts around Defi and Blockchain
How they do good business in fintech without touching any money 💰
It was great having you, Jean-Denis!2021-01-281h 09alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#17 - Eric Bowman // SVP Engineering TomTom
This time in the podcast I have a very bright guest I admire for years:
Eric Bowman, SVP Engineering at TomTom, Former VP Engineering at Zalando AND one of the
developers behind the game "The Sims" 🧍♂️
He is a brilliant mind when it comes to tech leadership and has strong opinions on autonomy and empowerment.
Topics we touched:
How 90s gaming development compares to 20s large scale tech teams
What TomTom does these days and the technical challenges in location based services & mapping these days
How to establish tech culture and open source in a large enterpris...2021-01-1457 minalphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#16 - Tyler McMullen // CTO Fastly
This time, I have a very technical podcast on Webassembly and the new kid on the block: the Edge Cloud
with Fastly's CTO Tyler McMullen, one of the leading CDNs and edge cloud companies out there.
The future of distributed computation: From Serverless to ☁️ Cloudless ☁️
Webassembly as the new industry standard intermediate representation/micro container.
And guess what? Your browser most likely already supports it!
How a CDN works internally and the challenges of building it
How he manages to still be a coding geek in 💰💰💰 10BN company
This podcast was actually recorded shortly before Covid - if you wonder how...2020-12-1740 min
alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders#15 - Jean Michel Lemieux // CTO Shopify
This time I had Jean Michel Lemieux or short JML, the CTO of 🛒 Shopify 🛒 in the podcast.
Craziest fact: He took the time two days before black Friday 💥. In the podcast he also told me why.
We spoke about:
His fight against crazy 👟 sneaker - sniping - bots and how Shopify keeps people
in line happy with games
What it takes to run the largest Ruby on Rails (majestic ;-)) monolith on the planet
Why he does not believe in microservice architecture but still runs some services
How he keeps his 2000 engineer army aligned
Why he still sells...2020-12-031h 17