Today's guest is Kevin Smith, who is co-founder of Snipd, one of the world's most popular podcast apps.With Kevin, we talked about his journey in tech, starting from quantitative finance and then running an AI team in a high-growth startup up to actually founding one with Snipd. Then we segued into talking about Snipd itself and what are the technical challenges of working with AI models all the time. And finally, we discussed the future of learning, what are Kevin's favorite podcasts, what makes them good, and how AI enables personalized learning at scale.01:26 Introduction01:45 Kevin's journey in tech04:18 AI giant leaps07:38 Sponsor08:50 Kevin's transition to founder16:30 What is Snipd?18:20 On AI models21:25 Snipd technical challenges29:49 How to improve quality in AI output31:30 AI in team management and dev processes34:19 AI coding enhancements38:05 Learning with modern tools42:50 Personalize learning with AI45:51 Kevin's favourite podcasts47:58 What makes a good podcast good?—This episode is brought to you by Swarmia! The engineering intelligence platform that serves some of the best software companies in the world.You can get 20% off by booking a demo at swarmia.com/refactoring!—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club

Today's guest is Dennis Pilarinos, who is founder and CEO of Unblocked. With Dennis, we talked about his journey in tech, which is just incredible, starting from director roles at Microsoft and Amazon, then founding BuddyBuild and later selling it to Apple, and eventually to these days where he founded Unblocked. And later we talked about Unblocked itself, which is one of the few developer AI tools that is specifically not about coding.So we talked about what problem it solves and the hardest tech challenges that the team has to work with.And finally, we discussed the future of DevTools, because Dennis has founded not one, but two companies about it. And this is a time of big transformation, with MCP, AI agents and more.01:48 Introduction02:33 Dennis' journey in tech06:11 Sponsor07:48 Adapting big tech knowledge15:31 Adding context to AI15:29 Managing humans and chaos25:03 AI and hallucination issue27:14 The tipping point of evolution28:33 The future of developer workflow34:25 Increase documentation to increase context33:43 AI: a future without layers36:53 Setting up a new dev team—This episode is brought to you by Swarmia! The engineering intelligence platform that serves some of the best software companies in the world.You can get 20% off by booking a demo at swarmia.com/refactoring!—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club

Today's guest is Michael Lopp, better known as Rands, who is Senior Director of Engineering at Apple and writer of several popular books about engineering management, including "Managing Humans", which is a personal favorite of mine.

With Rands, we discuss his journey into writing and the impact it had on his personal and professional growth. We reflected on his leadership style and the complexities of modern engineering management.

01:07 Introduction

02:49 Rands first steps in writing

06:06 Sponsor

07:46 Does writing help in managing?

13:05 Michael and Rands

15:29 Managing humans and chaos

19:56 Mentoring fresh managers

21:31 Rands' managing style

28:27 Feedbacks

30:25 Changes in engineering management

33:43 AI: a future without layers

40:10 Testing a thesis

42:40 AI Interation = People Interation

45:07 What is not going to change

48:38 The 10%

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You can also find this at:

• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm

• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw

• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305

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For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club

Today's guest is Guillermo Rauch, who is CEO and founder of Vercel.With Guillermo, we talked about his journey in tech, from a small-town in Argentina, to successful open-source developer, to CEO of a billion-dollar company. Then we covered the unique Vercel model, which combines open-source and commercial work. And finally, we discussed the future of AI, engineers, open-source and software engineering at large.01:29 Introduction02:04 What is Vercel?04:40 Vercel's "secret sauce"06:46 Guillermo's journey in tech10:31 Vercel vs Complexity12:07 Helping solo engineers and great teams17:38 The importance of JavaScript20:23 TypeScript and JavaScript22:11 Satisfying both open source and market landscape28:18 For the open-source engineers32:35 The last frameworks36:55 AI current limitations38:59 The best framework for AI43:48 100 milliseconds48:34 Does Guillermo still code?52:10 The founder mode53:59 AI will make us full stack—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club

Today's guest is Ori Keren, who is CEO and co-founder of LinearB and has more than 25 years of experience in the industry, especially in developer experience and productivity.
With Ori, we talked about how AI is infiltrating all the stages of the development process, from coding to testing to code reviews. We discussed how AI is already restructuring teams and how engineering leaders can drive adoption by combining culture, small wins and full moon shots.

01:07 Introduction
01:59 Development productivity in 2025
08:29 Code creation process and AI
10:46 Coding and bottlenecks
15:05 Cognitive unload using AI
16:48 The journey of AI adoption
21:50 AI native environment
24:57 How teams are changing
28:35 More AI = More development
30:40 The skeptcisim about coding with AI
33:50 Removing the toil from coding
35:31 AI help outside coding
41:50 How to integrate AI in a company
44:38 Go with the (AI) flow
45:34 Education in prompting
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You can also find this at:
• Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305
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For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club

Today's guest is Abi Noda, the CEO and founder of DX, one of the leading engineering intelligence platforms.With Abi, we talked about measuring developer experience. We started with the early days of Accelerate and why we feel like most people got the book wrong. And then we continued to present days and how research focuses on driving great developer experience. And finally, we couldn't avoid talking about AI and why it seems to be a game changer for entrepreneurs, but not so much for teams yet.01:23 Introduction02:45 Abi's journey in tech08:19 The four key metrics10:41 Metrics' reliability13:41 Diagnostic metrics16:06 A metric analogy18:23 Find productivy metrics drive22:03 What makes a developer experience good?29:44 The importance of comparison31:53 Common issues in developer experience34:55 Are meetings bad?36:16 AI in development process—This episode is brought to you by https://sleuth.io—You can also find this at:• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club

Today's guest is Joel Chippindale!Joel is a full-time CTO Coach and one of the coaches-in-residence in the Refactoring community, where he runs monthly mastermind sessions and other community events.So with Joel, we dived into what coaching is, the difference with mentoring, one-on-one versus group coaching, and what are the top challenges that CTO faces today, based on the work that Joel does with his coaches.02:34 Introduction03:40 Joel's journey in tech05:21 Finding a definition of coaching07:25 Mentoring and coaching roles10:22 One-to-on and group coaching12:53 The "hows" of coaching15:12 Is coaching a widespread practice?18:35 Top CTOs challenges21:43 Right support for right challenges26:08 Advocating for technical work31:53 Commonalities and uniquenesses in CTOs challenges34:20 The platonic ideal of CTO36:49 Choosing what to focus on39:48 How to delegate properly

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This episode is brought to you by https://workos.com

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You can also find this at:

- 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm

- 📱 YouTube: https://youtu.be/HgKAg1rtQoE

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For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club