What if your corporate job left you feeling empty, and you decided to leap into venture capital? Tim Chen, a software engineer, was disillusioned with corporate life at Microsoft. The 2008 market crash and layoffs deepened his dissatisfaction. Seeking more impactful work, Tim joined startups and contributed to open-source projects, like Kafka and D…

Today the tables have turned and you're going to hear someone interview me. Ronak and Guang from the Software Misadventures podcast are going to interview me about podcasting. My history as a software developer and I guess this big idea. That I don't think I've shared too much about the importance of communication. More details including a video ve…

What if you had to fight against your company's culture to bring a revolutionary tool to life? Meet Jeffrey Snover, the Microsoft architect behind PowerShell, a command tool that transformed Windows system administration. Initially met with skepticism, Snover's idea faced resistance from a company that favored graphical interfaces. Snover's journey…

Can you imagine risking your career to making coding easier to learn? Meet Felienne Hermans, a professor who did just that by stepping beyond academia to redefine coding education. Disillusioned by her research’s limited impact, Felienne discovered a new calling in teaching coding to underserved students. Her journey led to the creation of Hedy, a …

What if the tools you trust were actually betraying you? Join us for a riveting story where a team of software developers discovers that their compiler is compromised. What starts as suspicion of a simple bug quickly escalates into the alarming realization. In this 100th episode celebration past show regulars Don and Krystal join Adam lend their vo…

Meet Mick West, whose career began in an unusual office setup — sandwiched between a kebab shop and a phone sex hotline. From there he worked all over Manchester, making computer games for Tiertex and Ocean. Career opportunies brought him to California and to his own game dev company, Neversoft. At Neversoft, navigating team growth and tight deadli…

What if your dedication to doing things right clashed with your company’s fast pace? Chris Krycho faced this very question at LinkedIn. His journey was marked by challenges: from the nuances of remote work to the struggle of influencing company culture, and a critical incident that put his principles to the test against the company’s push for speed…

Greg Wilson has been on a decades-long quest to transform how we teach and talk about software design. From getting rejections for using the term “beautiful code,” to empowering scientists through workshops on Python and Unix, Greg has pushed to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Join us as Greg shares his failures and epiphanies along the…

What if your dreams were suddenly ripped away? What if your talents vanished, your passions erased? That's what happened to Jason McDonald when a traumatic brain injury at 16 ravaged his planned destiny of becoming a doctor. Jason painfully rebuilt his ind and body from scratch - relearning to read, write, even speak. A serendipitous discovery of c…

From the early days of exploring creative possibilities on a 486 computer in his childhood to developing one of today's most popular web frameworks, Evan You's journey is a tale of passion and innovation. Evan started Vue.js while working at Google, just wanting to scratch his own itch for a lightweight JavaScript framework. But soon Vue started to…