Episodios

  • #120 - AI's Singularity & Commoditization: Navigating Hype vs. Reality with Georg Zoeller // Co-Founder @ C4AIL

    #120 - AI's Singularity & Commoditization: Navigating Hype vs. Reality with Georg Zoeller // Co-Founder @ C4AIL
    Apr 17 2025
    In this episode, Tobi talks with Georg Zoeller, Co-Founder of the Centre for AI Leadership and mercenaries.ai, about the turbulent landscape of AI. Georg, with his background at Meta and deep expertise in AI strategy, cuts through the hype surrounding AI's capabilities and economic impact. They discuss the 'singularity' we're already in, driven by rapid, open-source AI development, and why this makes future predictions impossible. Georg argues that software engineering is being commoditized due to the vast amount of training data available (Stack Overflow, GitHub), making AI adept at code generation but raising profound security concerns like prompt injection. Explore: - Why Georg believes blindly adopting AI early is a 'terrible mistake' for most companies. - The fundamental security flaws in LLMs (prompt injection) and why they're currently unsolvable for open input spaces. - The questionable economics of AI: high costs, self-cannibalizing business models, and the reliance on performative fundraising. - How AI tools impact engineer productivity, shifting the bottleneck to decision-making and validation. - The geopolitical risks and diminishing trust associated with Big Tech's AI dominance. - Actionable advice for CTOs: Invest in understanding, focus on governance beyond the tech team, and consider the strategic value of local/open-source alternatives.
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    1 h y 14 m
  • #119 - Navigating Ambiguity and AI's Impact on Engineering feat. Ivan Kusalic // CTO @ Enpal

    #119 - Navigating Ambiguity and AI's Impact on Engineering feat. Ivan Kusalic // CTO @ Enpal
    Apr 4 2025
    In this episode, Tobi talks with Ivan Kusalic, CTO of Enpal, who leads a team of 250 engineers at one of Germany's leading solar energy companies. Ivan shares insights from his extensive technical leadership journey and his recent return to coding after seven years due to his excitement about AI. Ivan discusses how he navigates complexity and ambiguity in the renewable energy sector, where Enpal builds systems to help households manage solar panels, batteries, EV chargers, and heat pumps as integrated energy solutions. He explains the challenges of coordinating with Germany's fragmented energy grid infrastructure and how Enpal's Virtual Power Plant stabilizes the grid by coordinating household energy consumption in real-time. Discover: - 🧠 How Ivan uses intuition as a leadership tool while managing complex technical organizations - 🌞 The technical challenges of building integrated renewable energy systems for households - ⚡ How Enpal's Virtual Power Plant (VPP) helps stabilize the energy grid through coordinated home energy management - 📱 Ivan's personal productivity system and thought management techniques - 🤖 Insights on AI's impact on engineering productivity and the future of coding - 🚀 Practical tips for managing complexity and making decisions in ambiguous environments
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    57 m
  • #118 - Radical Engineering Culture and High Bar Hiring feat. Stefan Richter // Founder & CTO @ freiheit.com technologies

    #118 - Radical Engineering Culture and High Bar Hiring feat. Stefan Richter // Founder & CTO @ freiheit.com technologies
    Mar 20 2025
    Discover insights into building a high-performance engineering organization with Stefan Richter, founder of freiheit.com technologies. With 25+ years of experience delivering successful software projects for the Who’s Who of European businesses and industries, Stefan shares his philosophy of radical engineering culture and maintaining an exceptionally high bar in recruiting. This episode dives deep into how freiheit.com has achieved their "Never Late, Never Failed" mission through disciplined processes, carefully selected talent, and a relentless focus on simplicity. Listen to find out 🎯 Why shipping great software is their mission 🧑‍💻 How they maintain a high bar in recruiting with "tested in life" candidates 📊 Their approach to engineering career levels and continuous feedback 🏗️ Why they prefer full stack engineers over specialized roles 🧩 How they build complex systems from simple components ⚙️ Their custom-built engineering project management tool 🔄 Their program to continually find and remove friction 📈 How they've delivered every project successfully for 25 years 🔍 Why reducing entropy is critical in large software projects 🌐 Why great software should be simple and maintainable for decades
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    1 h y 3 m
  • #117 - Navigating AI Trends with Dat Tran // Partner & CTO @ DATANOMIQ, VP AI/ML @ Beams Safety AI

    #117 - Navigating AI Trends with Dat Tran // Partner & CTO @ DATANOMIQ, VP AI/ML @ Beams Safety AI
    Feb 7 2025
    AI is moving faster than ever, and staying ahead of the curve is a challenge for every tech leader. In this episode, Dat Tran joins Tobi to break down what’s happening in the AI space, from cutting-edge model releases to AI-powered productivity tools and the global race for AI dominance. Dat has spent years leading AI teams at Idealo and Axel Springer, co-founding AI-driven startups, and now helps companies make sense of AI without the fluff. Together, they explore the latest AI trends, the reality behind AI agents, and how engineering teams can actually get more done with AI today. 🚀 Dat’s journey in AI and tech leadership – From hacking on machine learning before it was cool to leading AI at Axel Springer and co-founding AI startups 🤖 DeepSeek R1’s impact – Why this new Chinese AI model is shaking up the industry and what makes it different from OpenAI’s GPT and Meta’s Llama 🛠️ AI agents & automation – What’s real and what’s just hype? Where do AI agents actually work in business today? 💻 The evolution of coding assistants – How AI tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot are redefining what it means to be a full-stack engineer 🌍 The global AI race – Is Europe really falling behind? A look at China’s AI boom, US dominance, and what European AI companies need to do to compete 📈 CTO strategies for AI adoption – How to separate hype from real opportunities and where AI can have the biggest impact in engineering teams today If you’re a CTO, AI enthusiast, or just trying to keep up with the latest AI breakthroughs, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.
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    1 h y 9 m
  • #116 - Exploring Platform Engineering feat. Camille Fournier // CTO @ Open Athena & Author @ O'Reilly Media

    #116 - Exploring Platform Engineering feat. Camille Fournier // CTO @ Open Athena & Author @ O'Reilly Media
    Jan 22 2025
    How do you create an effective platform team and optimize DevOps? Tobi interviews Camille Fournier about her career, technical insights, and best practices in platform engineering. Camille shares her journey from building her own computers and installing Linux in high school to becoming Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase and authoring influential books for engineers 📚. 👩‍💻 Camille's early fascination with computers and engineering, including building her own systems and installing Linux 📚 Authoring 'The Manager's Path' and 'Platform Engineering' 🌐 Understanding platform engineering and its evolution from DevOps 🚀 Challenges and strategies in platform engineering for larger companies 💡 Key advice for CTOs on starting and managing successful platform teams
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    1 h y 3 m
  • 115 - Exploring Growth and Compliance feat. Dennis Winter // CTO @ Börse Stuttgart

    115 - Exploring Growth and Compliance feat. Dennis Winter // CTO @ Börse Stuttgart
    Jan 9 2025
    Ever wondered how regulated companies like stock exchanges handle tech growth? Dennis Winter (CTO @ Börse Stuttgart) shares how to build engineering organizations in regulated environments. With experience from embedded systems to leading tech at SolarisBank and Börse Stuttgart, he dives deep into scaling teams while maintaining security and compliance standards 🏦 🏗️ Early-stage tech decisions and building engineering culture 🔄 Evolving team structures and processes as you scale beyond 50 employees 🔐 Security and compliance in regulated environments 🛠️ Infrastructure automation and the importance of early monitoring 🤝 Building team ownership and accountability in regulated companies ⚡️ Role-based access management and device policies
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    1 h y 2 m
  • #114 - Building an SDK feat. Dr. Daniel Hauschildt // CPTO @ IMG.LY

    #114 - Building an SDK feat. Dr. Daniel Hauschildt // CPTO @ IMG.LY
    Dec 19 2024
    Get insight into the SDK business (and learn about cross-platform performance and developer marketing) with Dr. Daniel Hauschildt (MD & CPTO at IMG.LY). As a client-side offering (no servers!), IMG.LY needs to take extra steps to ensure reliability on all devices 📱, platforms 💻 and browsers 🌐. From crafting developer-friendly documentation to optimizing performance on every device and platform imaginable, Daniel shares hard-earned insights from the SDK business. 👨‍💻What makes an SDK truly developer-friendly? 🤔 📜Documentation: The secret sauce of INBOUND developer marketing 🔌 API Design: Beauty of purpose-driven entry points 🧩How they build for the future with modular design 🐙 Cross-platform support: Native vs. cross-platform frameworks (React, Flutter etc.) ⚙️Why they focus on algorithm optimization over compute optimisation Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/114-daniel-hauschildt-cpto-imgly
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    41 m
  • #113 - Faster Incident Response feat. Tim Armandpour // CTO @ PagerDuty

    #113 - Faster Incident Response feat. Tim Armandpour // CTO @ PagerDuty
    Dec 5 2024
    Plan and PRACTICE for better incident response with insights from Tim Armandpour, CTO of PagerDuty. Learn the secrets to resilience from the team that mitigated the impact of a major outage—handling a 250% traffic surge while delivering on their SLA. Listen to find out: - 🛠️ Why planning AND practice are both critical for incident response. - 🚧 How to practice for incident response (e.g Failure Fridays with Chaos Engineering) - 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Ownership: Why tech AND business teams must join post-mortems. - ☁️ How to mitigate the impact of your cloud provider’s lower SLA. - ⚓ Which architectural patterns are more resilient? - ⚖️ WARNING: “bend” the CAP theorem at your own risk Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/113-tim-armandpour-cto-pagerduty
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    50 m
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