Loading…

The Stack Overflow Podcast

Subscribe to the podcast

Get The Stack Overflow Podcast at your favorite listening service.

One quality every engineering manager should have? Empathy.

Ryan talks with senior engineering manager Caitlin Weaver about how her childhood fascination with computers led to her leading CLEAR’s Cloud Infrastructure Engineering team, her experiences in DevOps, the role of empathy in engineering management, and how the platform engineering landscape is evolving.

Why build your own vector DB? To process 25,000 images per second

Ben and Ryan chat with Babak Behzad, senior engineering manager at Verkada, about running a pipeline that vectorizes 25,000 images per second into a custom-built vector database. They discuss whether the speed is due to technical brains or brawn, the benefits of processing on device vs. off, and the importance of privacy when using image recognition on frames from a video camera.

Will the web ever be the primary delivery system for 3D games?

Jaime Torrealba, a frontend developer currently at Push Security, joins Ryan to talk about 3D graphics and web development. Their conversation ranges from the evolution of technologies like WebGL and WebGPU to the importance of performance optimization for different devices to the frameworks available for creating 3D experiences. Jaime also explains the layers of abstraction in 3D development and shares some insight into what the future of 3D applications might look like.

“Countries are coming online tomorrow, whole countries”

Ben and Ryan are joined by RJ Tuit, Head of UI Platform and Client Architect at ClickUp, formerly an engineering director at Microsoft. They talk about ClickUp’s vision for a comprehensive productivity platform, the complexities of measuring productivity and UX in software development, how to navigate the hype around AI, and more. Plus: What it was like scaling Microsoft’s cloud services to meet the unprecedented demands of a global workforce in quarantine.

The developer skill you might be neglecting

Ben and Ryan talk with Geoffrey (Jef) Huck, a software developer turned public speaking coach, about the importance of soft skills in the tech industry—in particular, speaking and communication skills. Their conversation touches on how Huck’s experiences with anxiety shaped his efforts to become a better communicator, practical techniques for dispelling anxiety and connecting with the audience, and the MVP approach to public speaking.

Robots building robots in a robotic factory

Ryan talks with Sterling Chin, a senior developer advocate at Postman, about the intersection of APIs and AI. They cover the emergence of AI APIs, the importance of quality APIs for AI integrations, and the evolving role of GraphQL in this new landscape. Sterling explains how some organizations are shifting toward an API-first development approach and talks about the future of data access in the agentic era, where APIs will play a crucial role in AI interactions.

“Data is the key”: Twilio’s Head of R&D on the need for good data

In this episode, Ben and Ryan sit down with Inbal Shani, Chief Product Officer and Head of R&D at Twilio. They talk about how Twilio is incorporating AI into its offerings, the enormous importance of data quality in achieving high-quality responses from AI, the challenges of integrating cutting-edge AI technology into legacy systems, and how companies are turning to AI to improve developer productivity and customer engagement.

How AI apps are like Google Search

Happy New Year! In this episode, Ryan talks with Jetify founder and CEO Daniel Loreto, a former engineering lead at Google and Twitter, about what AI applications have in common with Google Search. They also discuss the challenges inherent in developing AI systems, why a data-driven approach to AI development is important, the implications of non-determinism, and the future of test automation.

Legal advice from an AI is illegal

Mark Doble, CEO of Alexi, an AI-powered litigation platform, joins Ben to talk about GenAI’s transformative effect on the legal world. Their conversation touches on the importance of ensuring accurate results and eliminating hallucinations when AI tools are used for legal work, how lawyers (like the rest of us) can adapt to GenAI, and what Alexi’s tech stack looks like.

“You don’t want to be that person”: What security teams need to understand about developers

The home team is joined by Kinnaird McQuaid, founder and CTO of NightVision, which offers developer-friendly API and web app security testing. Kinnaird talks about his path from school-age hacker to white-hat security expert, why it’s important to build security practices into the software development lifecycle, how GenAI is changing security testing, and what security teams need to understand about developers’ working lives.