Tech Lead Journal

Recent Episodes

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

   Sep 7, 2026

   Emilie Schario, co-founder of Kilo Code (recently acquired by Anaconda), discusses how engineering teams can responsibly leverage AI agents without outsourcing critical thinking. She explains Kilo's model-agnostic approach supporting 500+ models, introduces the metric of 'spend per merged pull request' as a better measure of AI ROI than raw costs, and explores how the 'killing problem'—the ease of shipping software—is forcing organizations to discover product-market fit after launch rather than before. The conversation covers the shift from engineers as code producers to code reviewers, strategies for code review at scale with AI agents, and the broader mindset changes needed for truly AI-native organizations.

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

   Aug 24, 2026

   Kevin Surace, inventor of the first AI assistant (Portico) and CEO of Appvance, discusses six decades of AI evolution from hidden Markov models to modern LLMs, explaining how his licensed technology powered Siri and Alexa. He addresses the shifting role of software developers in the AI era, arguing developers won't be displaced but rather will evolve from writing code to coordinating AI agents, and introduces his testing platform that uses AI to find bugs humans miss.

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

   Aug 10, 2026

   Milan Milanovic, CTO and author of 'Laws of Software Engineering', discusses 56 laws and principles that govern software projects and their renewed relevance in the AI era. The conversation covers Gall's Law on complexity, Conway's Law on organizational structure, Goodhart's Law on metrics, Hofstadter's Law on estimation, and the Dunning-Kruger effect, with practical applications for modern teams using AI agents.

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

   Aug 3, 2026

   Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi, co-authors of Signals & Levers (IT Revolution), discuss systems thinking applied to software delivery. They trace the persistent "software crisis" back to a 1968 NATO conference, arguing it stems from treating adaptive sociotechnical systems as linear processes. The conversation covers proxy metrics (velocity vs. cycle time), the CREATE framework, three leadership illusions (progress, predictability, control), and practical levers—both policy and cultural—that enable teams and leaders to sense and influence complex systems.

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

   Jul 27, 2026

   Dr. Margaret Ann Story, co-author of the SPACE Framework and leading researcher in developer productivity, discusses her recent paper on the hidden costs of AI-generated code. The conversation explores three types of technical debt: traditional technical debt (in code), cognitive debt (loss of understanding in people's minds), and intent debt (poor externalization of goals and decisions). Story shares observations from her Startup Studio course at the University of Victoria, where students using AI coding tools rapidly accumulated cognitive debt despite initial productivity gains, leading to fatigue, hallucination, and project stalls.

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

   Jul 13, 2026

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

   Jun 29, 2026

8. The Hidden Stories Sabotaging Your Culture Change

   Jun 15, 2026

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

   Jun 8, 2026

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

    Jun 1, 2026