What can leadership in Formula One teach the rest of us about business transformation? In this episode of the Tech Talks Daily Podcast, I sit down with Seb Sheppard, whose career has taken him from flying helicopters in the Royal Navy to leading engineering teams in Formula One and steering post-merger integrations across multiple industries. His story isn't just one of impressive career shifts but of understanding what truly drives high performance—people, trust, and focus.

Seb shares how growing up in Chile and working across different cultures taught him the value of clear communication and empathy in leadership. He explains why protecting technical teams from distractions can often be the most productive thing a leader can do, and how wellbeing initiatives work best when driven by employees themselves rather than top-down policies. Drawing on his time at Alpine F1, he also reveals the delicate balance between cost control and performance improvement, describing how he helped grow the engineering team by a third while staying within strict budget limits.

Our conversation also explores the human side of mergers and acquisitions. Seb discusses why integration efforts often fail when companies overlook culture and people, and how proactive communication—long before an announcement is made—can make the difference between success and attrition. He also speaks about the evolving relationship between technology and leadership, explaining how AI can be embraced without losing the human element that drives creativity and trust.

If you're a leader facing constant change, this episode is a masterclass in adaptability, humility, and practical wisdom. You'll come away with lessons from both the skies and the racetrack that apply directly to your own teams and projects.

Connect with Seb Sheppard at www.sebsheppard.com or on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/sebsheppard.

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How do you secure a world where trusted internal traffic now travels over the public internet? That's the question I put to Doug Merritt, CEO of Aviatrix, in this thought-provoking conversation recorded for Tech Talks Daily. Doug brings decades of experience from his time leading Splunk and other major technology players, and he now finds himself at the forefront of reshaping how enterprises think about cloud security.

We discuss why the cybersecurity landscape is more treacherous than ever, especially as AI accelerates both defense and attack capabilities. Doug explains why the old "castle and moat" mindset no longer applies in the age of cloud workloads, where perimeters are atomized and workloads are ephemeral. He outlines how identity, endpoint, and network security form a three-legged stool—yet too many organizations focus on one leg while neglecting the others.

Doug also shares why embedding protection directly into the network fabric changes the rules for defending the cloud, and how his team at Aviatrix is helping companies close dangerous visibility gaps. We explore the rise of agentic AI, the growing sophistication of lateral movement attacks, and why even trusted identities can pose risk in distributed environments. As we look to the future, Doug argues that the path forward is clear: build on strong foundations, simplify the noise, and make network visibility a first-class citizen in enterprise defense.

What do you think—are most organizations ready to shift from bolted-on tools to truly embedded cloud security? I'd love to hear your thoughts after listening.

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Every software team, no matter its size or sophistication, has wrestled with the same quiet threat, technical debt. But what if the issue isn't just messy code or outdated frameworks, but something more human? That's the question Ernesto Tagwerker, Founder and CEO of OmbuLabs.ai, has been asking as he works at the intersection of AI, developer experience, and legacy modernization.

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, Ernesto joins me from Philadelphia to unpack why technical debt is so misunderstood and why the term has drifted far from Ward Cunningham's original metaphor. He argues that many teams treat it as a one-off cleanup task when, in reality, it's a living health issue that must be managed continuously. As he explains, "Every time you have to work around messy code, you're paying interest. And if later never comes, that interest piles up until progress grinds to a halt."

We explore how AI is changing the way engineers think about remediation and developer experience (DX). Ernesto shares how OmbuLabs.ai uses AI agents to automate parts of the Rails upgrade process, scanning codebases for deprecations and generating actionable plans for clients. But his caution is clear, these tools are only as smart as the people orchestrating them. When used carelessly, they can generate invisible layers of new debt just as fast as they resolve the old.

Ernesto also reflects on research from Google that reveals how "technical debt" varies wildly between teams and projects. He explains why leadership alignment is vital, how recurring surveys can help identify developer pain points, and why organizations should measure "technical health" rather than chase the unrealistic goal of zero debt. We discuss the cultural shift required for long-term success and why allocating even 10 to 20 percent of each sprint to DX improvements can dramatically reduce burnout and turnover.

Finally, Ernesto offers his take on the future. AI will continue to automate repetitive work and surface smarter insights, but human oversight remains non-negotiable. In his words, "AI agents are only as good as their human operator."

This conversation goes beyond code reviews and sprint retrospectives. It's about redefining what progress means in software development, healthier systems, happier developers, and smarter collaboration between humans and machines.

Listen now to hear how Ernesto Tagwerker and OmbuLabs.ai are rethinking technical debt, DX, and AI-driven engineering for the decade ahead.

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