Tech Lead Journal
Henry Suryawirawan
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.
Episodes
Mentioned books
32 snips
May 4, 2026 • 1h 15min
The Future of Code Review: Stop Reviewing Line-by-Line, Start Governing AI Agents
Itamar Friedman, founder and CEO of Qodo.ai and expert in AI-driven code governance, explains why line-by-line review won’t scale. He describes multi-agent review systems, shifting quality checks into planning, and redesigning review UIs to surface only human-needed issues. He also contrasts vibe coding with grounded workflows and maps how teams can evolve toward agentic governance.
39 snips
Apr 27, 2026 • 1h 5min
FeatureOps: The Safety Net You Need When Shipping with AI
Egil Østhus, CEO and co-founder of Unleash and FeatureOps advocate, discusses why feature management must be strategic. He outlines the four pillars of FeatureOps and how they decouple releases from deployments. He explains risks of DIY flags, the role of product-led rollouts, and why AI-driven development makes guardrails, fast rollback, and lifecycle controls essential.
28 snips
Apr 20, 2026 • 1h 16min
Stop Vibe Coding: Spec-Driven Development with The BMad Method
Brian Madison, senior engineering manager and creator of the BMad Method, shares a spec-first approach to AI-driven development. He explains why vibe coding fails and how PRDs, architecture, UX and context-rich stories unlock agent success. He recounts a two-week no-typing sprint, how teams gained permission to fail, and why the unit of work is shifting toward full features and epics.
33 snips
Apr 13, 2026 • 1h 4min
Why Incumbents Will Fall: How to Build a Hyperadaptive AI-Native Organization
Melissa Reeve, author and organizational change expert who created the Hyperadaptive model, explains why legacy structures break AI initiatives. She describes how AI compresses strategy-to-execution and demands rewiring away from Taylorist silos. Topics include agentic execution pipelines, five capabilities of hyperadaptive firms, value-stream organization, multi-layer AI governance, and staged paths to scale AI across enterprises.
12 snips
Apr 6, 2026 • 1h 30min
How Vidio (Indonesia's #1 Streaming Platform) Built Great Engineering Culture — Now Supercharged by AI
Tommy Sullivan, CTO of Vidio and former Pivotal Labs engineer, built a lasting engineering culture from five to 200+ by hiring for attitude and using Extreme Programming. He talks about rethinking pair programming with AI agents, where AI has succeeded and failed at Vidio, streaming 4TB/s to millions, and why vendor independence and culture protect code quality.
65 snips
Mar 30, 2026 • 1h 4min
Why Senior Engineers Struggle as Tech Leads: The 3 Mindset Shifts That Fix It
Anemari Fiser, tech lead coach and author of Leveling Up as a Tech Lead, shares the three mindset shifts that transform senior engineers into effective leaders. She discusses moving from I to We, focusing on value over code, and trading short-term wins for long-term impact. Topics include letting go of coding, delegation that sticks, influencing without authority, and leading teams through AI adoption.
61 snips
Mar 16, 2026 • 1h 4min
Design the System, Not the Hero: Building Trust in the AI Era
Andrew Stevens, CTO and serial tech entrepreneur with 30+ years building and scaling companies, shares hard-won lessons on AI governance and resilient systems. He discusses why data beats software as a moat. He explains what breaks when startups scale and how to design systems that do not rely on one person. He covers hiring for attitude, sandbox-to-production models, and trustworthy AI agent frameworks.
57 snips
Mar 9, 2026 • 1h 3min
Why Coding Alone Is No Longer Enough: Become A Product-Minded Engineer
Drew Hoskins, author and product-minded engineer with senior staff experience at Microsoft, Meta, and Stripe, explains why engineers must think in user scenarios as well as systems. He walks through the Double Diamond (Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver). He describes the “great re-indexing” between engineer and user thinking and how AI makes product skills the new differentiator.
30 snips
Mar 2, 2026 • 1h 12min
The MCP Security Risks You Can't Afford to Ignore
Ariel Shiftan, CTO of MCPTotal and security researcher with a PhD in Computer Science, explains why MCP became the “USB for AI” and how common implementations leak credentials and expose local services. He recounts real zero-days, dives into supply chain and shadow IT risks, and outlines safer design and governance practices for adopting MCP tooling securely.
53 snips
Feb 23, 2026 • 1h 15min
Stop Telling Yourself You're Bad at “People Stuff”
Martijn Versteeg, founder of Group Effort and former CPTO with a background in organizational psychology, explains people skills as predictable systems you can learn. He outlines a six-needs model for behavior, why common personality tests can mislead, a 10-second approach to deliver bad news, how to transition from coding to leadership, and the psychological risks of heavy AI use.
