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Beyond Coding: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Patrick Akil
For software engineers ready to level up. Learn from CTOs, principal engineers, and tech leaders about the skills beyond coding: from technical mastery to product thinking and career growth
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The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 3 days ago1h 22m
The AI Spend Question Nobody Can Answer
How do you prove AI is shipping more features? Amos Haviv leads the Developer Workflow teams at Booking.com, supporting 4000 engineers operating 8000 repos.Everybody is burning through their AI budget right now and almost nobody can answer what it bought them. Amos can, because his team spent four years building an event system to debug their own SDLC before AI upped the urgency.In this video, we cover:Why verification is the bottleneck right now, and where it moves nextBuilding an event store that separates KTLO from real feature deliveryWhy static dashboards create the metric they measure, and the cobra story behind itAgent cost, model routing, and why Booking ignores token maxing entirelyRunning a developer survey with a 92% response rate across 3k+ engineersWho should own skills and MCPs: a central platform team or the domain experts?For platform engineers, engineering leaders, and anyone being asked to prove ROI on AI tooling this quarter.Timestamps:00:00:00 - Everyone is burning through their budget00:00:32 - Verification Is the Bottleneck Every Team Hit00:03:35 - 4,000 Engineers and 8,000 Repos at Booking.com00:06:48 - Why Copying Google and OpenAI Will Break You00:09:21 - Verification Is a Stack of Agents, Not One Review00:13:27 - Cost Is Becoming a Bottleneck of Its Own00:17:14 - Was the Internet a Bubble? What That Teaches Us00:25:32 - What Working With the Frontier Labs Looks Like00:28:26 - Debugging the SDLC With Four Years of Event Data00:30:24 - Do Engineers Using AI Actually Ship More Features?00:37:13 - Where to Start If You Measure Nothing Today00:45:01 - The Cobra Effect: When a Metric Becomes a Target00:52:23 - Everyone Is a Builder Now, and Everything Needs Support01:01:21 - Is AI Turning Every Engineer Into a Manager?01:03:46 - The Developer Survey With a 92% Response Rate01:10:09 - Who Owns Skills, MCPs, and the Enterprise Harness01:17:46 - Great Developer Experience Is High VelocityMentioned in the episode:High Output Management by Andy GroveThe Sovereign Individual (1997)The story of General MagicViews expressed are Amos's own and do not represent Booking.com.#AI #SoftwareEngineering #DeveloperExperience
- 1 weeks ago1h 53m
AWS Veteran: The Agent Blueprint Behind 1,400 Engineers
"I need to stop using Opus. This doesn't work." That was Heitor Lessa's conclusion after a refactor cost him 200 million tokens, and it forced him to rebuild the entire agent workflow now used across 1,400 engineers. Heitor spent 11 years at AWS, built Lambda Powertools to 230 billion API calls a week, and in this episode he walks through the full SDLC workflow on screen, from discovery to merge check.In this episode, we cover:The product loop: discovery, whiteboarding, and the /roadmap commandSpec-driven development with Open Spec and why vanilla setups failThree model tiers: SOTA for planning, mid-tier for implementation, cheap models for reviewsMerge checks with adversarial reviewers and attestations that catch agents fabricating test resultsThe /retro command: using the Socratic method to make your workflow more deterministicIf you're an engineer figuring out how to work with agents at team scale without losing trust in your codebase, this is the workflow to steal. This is also the first Beyond Coding episode with visuals on screen, so let me know what you think of the format.Timestamps:00:00:00 - The Math Doesn't Add Up00:00:43 - Amazon Hypergrowth: 11 Years, 8 Different Roles00:03:29 - Learning From the Trenches as a Technical Account Manager00:08:38 - Developer Identity and the Birth of Lambda Powertools00:10:20 - The Hard Parts of Working in Public00:13:12 - How Powertools Hit 230 Billion API Calls a Week00:16:42 - Career Advice: Learn Adjacent Roles, Not More Tech00:19:37 - When Leadership Decisions Don't Make Sense to You00:23:21 - The Product Loop Starts With Discovery00:25:22 - From Whiteboard to /roadmap00:27:37 - Why Humans Plan First and Agents Come Second00:30:33 - Commands vs Skills Across 32 Different Models00:33:38 - Adversarial Reviewers on Every Plan00:36:07 - The Socratic Method, Explained00:40:29 - Why He Only Takes Paper Notes00:44:43 - The Five-Line Paper Trick for High-Stakes Meetings00:48:18 - /new-work: Capturing Scope Creep Without Derailing00:54:03 - The Dev Loop Begins: Open Spec Explore00:56:34 - Three Model Tiers: SOTA, Mid, Cheap00:57:43 - The $5,000/Month Per Engineer Question00:58:57 - Guardrails vs Autonomy for 1,400 Engineers01:04:22 - Auto-Sizer: Does This Task Even Need a Spec?01:07:26 - Decision Fatigue and Why Frameworks Win01:09:10 - The Plan Phase: Specs, Design, Formal Verification01:13:07 - The Refactor That Cost 200 Million Tokens01:15:11 - When Agents Forge Evidence They Ran Your Tests01:17:27 - Local-First Architecture Explained01:23:04 - The Apply Phase: Fully Autonomous Loops01:24:30 - Coding Was Never the Bottleneck01:26:39 - Why This Workflow Is an Investment01:27:39 - Decision Logs and the /onboarding Command01:29:06 - Running Agents Locally With Enterprise Governance01:32:42 - Hooks: Making Quality Gates Deterministic01:36:02 - Merge Checks: 15 Adversarial Reviewers Per Change01:38:30 - /retro: Interviewing Yourself to Improve the Loop01:43:12 - Trust, Loss of Trust, and Recovery With Agents01:48:02 - Experience, Scars, and Critical Thinking01:49:32 - Why Right Now Is the Time to Experiment01:52:04 - Conviction Comes From Being in the Loop#softwareengineering #aiagents #aws
- 2 weeks ago28 min
What Senior Engineers do Differently (Vercel VP)
What senior engineers do differently has less to do with output than most career ladders suggest, and Lindsey Simon, VP of Engineering at Vercel, has watched the distinction sharpen as everyone in the valley becomes a "member of technical staff." From why new grads with hackathon years might out-prepare engineers with six years on the job, to what happens when PR throughput stops being your lever, this is a conversation about what earns seniority now.In this episode, we cover:Why engineering roles are consolidating into "member of technical staff"How to ask agents first and frame better questions to humansThe scope-of-impact ladder and what the best engineers systematizeLearning how to learn: closing gaps to 100% understandingWhy writing is the skill that scalesIf you're wondering whether your years of experience still compound, or you're early-career and tired of the "woe is the juniors" narrative, this one reframes both.TIMESTAMPS00:00:00 - Impact the Business00:00:31 - FOMO all the time: The 2006 Google Interview00:01:52 - Engineering Roles Are Consolidating00:02:52 - The "Member of Technical Staff" trend in SF00:03:33 - Interns Demo to the CTO00:04:33 - How New Grads Out-Prepare Senior Engineers00:06:10 - Ask Your Agent Before You Ask a Human00:08:01 - Digging Backwards Into Fundamental Understanding00:09:22 - "We're All Junior Engineers Again"00:10:22 - Management Is Not Leadership00:12:04 - Losing PR Throughput as Your #1 Lever00:13:11 - Fulfillment Beyond Shipping Features00:14:32 - Building for Fickle Engineers: Telemetry Beats Opinions00:16:11 - Watching Users Struggle With Your Product00:18:12 - Have Expectations for Seniors Actually Changed?00:19:57 - Claude Says a Month, It Takes Two Hours00:20:33 - What the Best Engineers Do Differently00:21:30 - How Vercel React Skill Came to Be00:22:23 - Why Conference Conversations Hit Different00:23:35 - Learning How to Learn: Close Gaps to 100%00:25:41 - The Case for Liberal Arts in Tech00:27:03 - Get Feedback Early, Don't Hide in the CaveGuest - Lindsey Simon, VP of Engineering at Vercel:https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseysimon#softwareengineering #ai #careergrowth
- 3 weeks ago40 min
Why the Fastest Engineers Are Falling Behind
The fastest engineers are falling behind, and Kitze was one of them. He built his reputation on raw coding speed, then realized his coding wasn't competing with anyone's coding anymore, it was competing with their setups. Wake-up call for developers: Kitze now runs 140 projects solo with agent loops, and in this episode he breaks down what separates the engineers pulling ahead from the ones getting left behind.In this episode, we cover:Vibe coding vs vibe engineering, and how to get better results from your agentsPolice files: Self-correcting loops that end every agent turn with zero errorsWhy teams of 10 are collapsing into teams of 2, and who survivesThe rude awakening coming for engineers who refuse to adaptThe number one advice to stay on track and fight FOMOFor individual contributors, tech leads, and principal engineers who don't plan on falling behindTIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 - Intro00:00:40 - Vibe Coding vs Vibe Engineering: The Real Difference00:02:16 - Police Files: The Self-Correcting Loop on Every Turn00:05:23 - Capture Every Frustration as a Rule00:06:53 - Why Being the Fastest Coder Stopped Mattering00:09:45 - Problem Solver vs Problem Lover: Pick One00:10:43 - The Rude Awakening Engineers Don't Want00:12:05 - Why Teams of 10 Become Teams of 200:13:09 - Loop Engineering: The Edge Anyone Can Build00:16:08 - Why No Agent Orchestrator Works Yet00:17:07 - Starting a Fresh Codebase: What Kitze Transfers00:19:14 - No Sidebars: Inventing an Agentic OS00:21:07 - How Kitze Shipped 300 Changes Across 200 Repos00:23:40 - We Are Becoming the Bottleneck00:24:25 - Why Leadership Must Give Engineers Room to Experiment00:26:16 - The Token Divide: Not Everyone Can Compete00:27:41 - Learn Now or Lose Access Later00:29:33 - The Culling: Coasting Is Going Away00:30:45 - Why LLM Code Reviews Beat Tired Seniors00:33:21 - Solo Engineers With Agent Swarms vs Teams00:34:53 - Agents Climbing the Org Chart to CEO00:36:03 - What Distinguishes the Best Engineers: Unblocking00:36:50 - Ego Is the Real Bottleneck00:37:55 - Kitze's #1 Advice: Stick to One Model
- Jul 1, 202658 min
AI Cloud CTO: Which Engineering Skills Are Most In-Demand Right Now
Danila Shtan runs engineering at Nebius, one of the biggest AI clouds in the world, and he told me exactly which engineers he hires on the spot. There are only hundreds of people on the planet with the skill he wants most, and it is not the one you are grinding on. We get into which engineering skills are actually scarce and well paid today, and which ones are quietly on the way out.In this episode we cover:The engineering skills in highest demand right now and which ones are on the way outWhy an AI cloud CTO restricts Claude Code inside his own companyDan's rule for merging any AI-written code into productionWhy working with an agent is like managing a junior engineerThe interview question that surfaces top tier engineer qualitiesWhy he still runs algorithm interviews todayIf you are an engineer trying to work out where the value sits now that agents write the easy code, this is a straight answer from the person building the infrastructure underneath all of it.Timestamps:00:00:00 - AI Agents doing everything is a lie00:00:44 - What Nebius Actually Does00:04:31 - The Engineers In Highest Demand Right Now00:06:58 - Inside the Hiring Process00:08:12 - The Bootcamp: You Join the Company, Not a Team00:10:51 - Why You Can't Use AI in Their Interviews00:16:31 - Why He Banned the Word "Headcount"00:22:25 - Why a CTO Is Not a Technical Role00:24:49 - The One Skill Every Manager Needs00:25:48 - Why Smart People Fail at This00:28:17 - "The Promise of Agents Is Bullshit"00:31:39 - How AI Multiplies Your Baseline Skill00:35:32 - Why an AI Agent Is Just a Junior Engineer00:36:57 - Why He Won't Let His Team Use Claude Code00:37:46 - His Rule for Merging AI-Written Code00:40:28 - The Interview That Predicts Great Engineers00:42:32 - From T-Shaped to Round-Shaped Engineers00:44:30 - Is There Still a Path for Juniors?00:45:28 - Why Hard Skills No Longer Matter00:47:11 - The Engineers Who Will Become Obsolete00:50:04 - The Real Reason People Stay at Banks00:52:26 - Where AI Agents Actually Help00:54:40 - Why He Still Uses Algorithm Interviews00:56:05 - Tech Enthusiasts vs. Real Engineers#AIEngineering #TechCareers #SoftwareEngineering
- Jun 24, 202646 min
Career Expert: Why Applying to Jobs No Longer Works
120,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026, yet there are 60,000 open roles. Engineers applying are sending out 100 applications for zero replies. Former Reddit, Uber and Disney Plus recruiter Keki Mwaba breaks down why the market broke, why every resume now looks identical, and what gets you hired when yours looks like everyone else's.In this video, we cover:Why 120,000 layoffs and 60,000 open roles don't add upWhy CVs have become too good and it's no longer enoughHow to treat LinkedIn as a platformGetting into companies like OpenAI and AnthropicHow to reach out to people without seeming fakeIf you're a software engineer trying to stand out in the most competitive tech market in years, this is the playbook.Timestamps:00:00:00 - Intro00:00:35 - How bad is the tech job market in 2026?00:02:38 - 120,000 laid off, 60,000 jobs open: the math is not mathing00:04:05 - LinkedIn isn't a CV, it's a platform00:08:30 - The underrated move: comment your way into a job00:10:48 - Is AI ruining LinkedIn?00:13:50 - Never feel safe: how to prepare before a layoff00:15:34 - What layoffs do to the people who stay00:17:03 - "Did I just automate myself out of a job?"00:18:48 - Why every resume now looks the same00:20:11 - Why referrals beat applications00:22:13 - Do software engineers still have a future?00:23:32 - The staff engineer who wants to quit for plumbing00:26:16 - Patrick on his own job security00:30:21 - 70% of job descriptions now demand AI skills00:31:34 - Is middle management disappearing?00:33:53 - The impossible ask: stay current, deliver, and not burn out00:37:02 - How to get hired at OpenAI or Anthropic00:39:18 - How to message someone without seeming fake00:41:42 - Build a portfolio that shows your thinking00:45:12 - Your personal branding plan for the next few weeksGuest: Keki Mwaba, career and recruitment expert:https://www.linkedin.com/in/keki-mwaba#techjobs #softwareengineering #careeradvice
- Jun 17, 202651 min
Why the Frontrunners Say Coding Is Solved BUT Engineering is Not
Jeroen Gordijn and Jeroen Dee: two frontrunners who stopped writing code months ago and say software development is already solved. Typing code is no longer necessary, but what matters more now? If you're an engineer that loves coding, you're in a tougher spot than you might realize.In this video, we cover:- Why writing code is "solved" but engineering isn't- Spec-driven development and how to get it started in your team- The "Dark Factory" and why code review is a huge bottleneck- Model vs harness: what matters more, and why- The unhealthy side of agentic codingIf you write software for a living and you're trying to work out what your job becomes next, start here.Timestamps:00:00:00 - Coding Is No Longer Necessary00:00:43 - Why "Software Development Is Already Solved"00:02:57 - Should You Even Read the AI's Code?00:05:05 - What Is a "Dark Factory"?00:06:52 - If You Can Regenerate It, Why Care About Quality?00:07:49 - Spec-Driven Development Explained00:11:32 - Adopting Specs Without Starting From Scratch00:13:23 - Model vs Harness: What Matters More?00:17:27 - Is Your Harness the New IDE?00:20:18 - Why Everyone Plateaus (and the Innovation Token)00:22:50 - Where to Actually Spend Your Time00:24:57 - The Unhealthy Side: "It's Free Cocaine"00:28:00 - Is This Sustainable, or Just Subsidized?00:30:33 - Should You Run Models Locally?00:34:31 - Looping, Scale, and Automating Review00:37:53 - What's Left for Engineers to Do?00:39:13 - If You Love Writing Code, You're in Trouble00:41:18 - Why Teams Are Getting Smaller00:43:03 - What an "Agentic Company" Looks Like00:46:25 - How to Start: Find Your Spark00:50:13 - The One Habit That Keeps You AheadGuests: Jeroen Gordijn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroengordijnJeroen Dee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroendee#AgenticEngineering #SoftwareEngineering #Agents
- Jun 10, 202640 min
Why The Best Software Engineers Are Solving Code Review Bottlenecks Now
AI generates 10x more code, but your senior engineers still review it by hand and it's burning them out. Even Google admits code review is now the bottleneck nobody knows how to solve.Florian Buetow, AI engineer at Xebia, has been running experiments to eliminate the human from the review loop entirely, and what he found changes where engineers should focus their effort.In this episode, we cover:Why "stop doing code reviews" is a serious answer (and what replaces them)The guardrails that gave the most value: Semgrep rules, architectural unit tests, and stop hooksWhy your harness matters more than the modelHow Amazon and Google police AI-generated code with policiesAI burnout, cognitive debt, and "cognitive surrender": what stays your responsibilityStep one for adopting agentic software engineering in your team this weekWhether you're an individual developer drowning in AI-generated PRs or driving AI adoption across a large engineering org, you'll leave with concrete experiments to run.More from Florian:https://cracking-ai-engineering.comTimestamps:00:00:00 - Intro00:00:40 - Code Review Is Software Engineering's Biggest Bottleneck00:01:57 - How Amazon and Big Tech Police AI-Generated Code00:02:55 - Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling of AI Engineering00:04:37 - Why "No Code Reviews" Might Be the Answer00:05:22 - Engineering Environments That Give Agents Feedback00:06:46 - Why the Harness Matters More Than the Model00:07:21 - When Spec-Driven Development Failed and TDD Worked00:10:06 - Stop Hooks, Ralph Loops, and Automated Feedback00:11:30 - The Guardrails That Gave the Most Value00:14:00 - Architectural Constraints That Keep AI Code Sane00:15:07 - What Remains a Human Responsibility00:17:33 - Why All the Hard Work Moves Upfront Now00:18:47 - The Incredible Skill Junior Engineers Should Learn00:20:26 - AI Burnout: Why Engineers Are Exhausted00:22:42 - Cognitive Surrender: Letting the Agent Take Over00:23:25 - The Hand Grenade Problem with AI at Work00:24:08 - Outsourcing Code Review to AI Itself00:26:39 - Teams That Fully Adopted Spec-Driven Development00:29:01 - Can You Rebuild Software From Tests Alone?00:30:27 - How to Experiment and Stay Ahead00:33:15 - Spying on What Subagents Tell Each Other00:33:59 - Step One: How to Start with Guardrails00:36:08 - Data Mining Your Session Logs for Patterns00:37:00 - Stuck With One Harness? Here's What to Do00:38:28 - The One Experiment to Run This Week#softwareengineering #aicoding #codereview
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About Beyond Coding
For software engineers ready to level up. Learn from CTOs, principal engineers, and tech leaders about the skills beyond coding: from technical mastery to product thinking and career growth
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