Refactoring Podcast

Hosted by Luca Rossi

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Jun 2026

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About the show

Weekly interviews with world-class engineering leaders about writing great software and working well with humans.

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June 12, 2026Episode 6558 min

Understanding Engineers' Needs 🧬 — with Lara Hogan

Today's guest is Lara Hogan, an author, public speaker and coach for managers and leaders across the whole tech industry. And she's had a long career as VP of engineering at FLY, Kickstarter, Director Etsy and more. So with Lara we talked about her journey in tech, which started with a philosophy degree. And then, taking from her work as a coach, we talked more about how successful teams are adopting AI and what you can do to make engineers feel safe about it. And finally, we explored the Biceps framework and how you can better understand people's needs at work.(00:00) Episode start(01:25) Introduction(02:59) Why nuanced AI takes matter more than slogans(04:25) Sponsor break(08:54) From philosophy major to engineering director(15:09) Becoming a manager(18:54) Do humanities give you an edge in the AI era?(22:04) Teams thriving with AI vs teams struggling(28:03) Setting clear expectations without creating fear(35:52) The AHA meetings: sharing learnings, not just wins(41:40) The BICEPS framework(47:18) When frustration isn't curiosity(52:58) Reflect back what you hear—Today's episode is brought to you by Unblocked.Unblocked is the context layer for modern engineering teams.Get a free three-week trial at getunblocked.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

May 29, 2026Episode 6458 min

The Future of Engineering 🔮 — with James Stanier

Today's guest is James Stanier, CTO at Nordhealth, former director at Shopify, an author of several books about engineering management, remote work, and more.With James, we talked about what senior engineers will look like in the future, taking from a great article he wrote just recently, and then regarding how engineering management is changing, what's expected of managers today, and what you need to thrive.We also talked about AI adoption in his team, in our personal respective lives, and discussed the state of remote work in 2026.(00:00) Episode start(01:25) Introduction(02:05) Senior engineers in 2035(05:11) Sponsor break(06:45) Level of abstraction: from compilers to AI(10:17) Excited engineers and worried engineers(12:44) The bifurcation: vibe coders vs platform engineers(16:51) Engineering managing role changes(23:21) Managing time with expanding roles(28:32) Are hierarchies flattening?(36:25) AI adoption in James' team(41:27) What's hard in the AI era(44:36) AI as a personal assistant(50:05) Remote work in 2026-Today's episode is brought to you by Unblocked.Unblocked is the context layer for modern engineering teams.Get a free three-week trial at getunblocked.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

May 15, 2026Episode 631 hr 0 min

The State of Product Development 🔍 — with Doug Peete

Today's guest is Doug Peete, Chief Product Officer at Atono, with whom over the last few months we have developed a deep industry report about the state of product development.In this chat we'll go through the main findings of the report, match them to our respective experience and explore ideas about how teams can do better with product development and AI(00:00) Episode start(01:38) Introduction(02:39) Sponsor break(05:38) Frailty of planning process(10:58) Product(13:19) What needs to be done(20:38) Design reviews(26:33) How to improve requirements(27:41) Knowledge across teams(35:07) Capturing the history of a product(39:14) Enabling sharing process(47:17) New metrics in AI era(50:47) AI in product requirements and products specs-Today's episode is brought to you by Unblocked.Unblocked is the context layer for modern engineering teams.Get a free three-week trial at getunblocked.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

May 1, 2026Episode 6256 min

How to Own Your Career 🦝 — with Jean Hsu and Cate Huston

Today's guests, plural, are Jean Hsu and Cate Huston.They're both extremely experienced engineering leaders and coaches, accomplished authors, and have held leadership roles at companies like Duck.co, Automattic, Medium and more. And are now running a program to help engineers and managers become, in their own words, directly responsible individuals of their careers to navigate these complicated times, to say the least. So with Jean and Cate, we talked about exploring what you want from your career, how to be intentional about it, how to use feedback to assess how you're doing, and how AI is changing and not changing the picture.(01:51) Introduction(03:39) Dealing with adverse conditions(09:45) Sponsor break(10:42) DRI your career and coaching(13:07) Career's approach(18:52) Figuring out your goal: Luca's example(30:48) Coaching for EMs vs coaching for ICs(32:23) Moving forward in your daily job(36:06) Feedbacks and culture of appreciation(41:32) Does AI change how do you think about your career?(45:42) AI pressure and AI passion—Today’s sponsor is Intent by Augment. Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents: it starts with the living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Try it for yourself at https://www.augmentcode.com/product/intent—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

April 17, 2026Episode 611 hr 5 min

AI Coding meets Code Health 🪄 — with Stuart Caborn

Today's guest is Stuart Caborn, distinguished engineer at loveholidays, which is an online travel agency with millions of customers around the world.I'm talking with Stuart because his team is doing AI coding for real.They operate an extremely complex product and technology, with each engineer deploying to production more than 80 times a month, with more than 60% of production code being written with AI, all while maintaining an absolutely elite change failure rate under 1%, and with perfect code health.So, let's see how they pull this off.(01:29) Introduction(02:30) What it loveholidays?(06:04) Sponsor break(07:00) loveholidays' AI approach(10:16) Code quality(13:36) Making quality visible(14:52) AI, MCP and top use cases(22:19) Code health and engineers' happiness(29:35) How was AI implemented at loveholidays(37:01) Experimenting with AI and skills(42:30) How to spread AI into an org(47:31) Guardrails in dev process(56:40) Other process changes—Today’s sponsor is Intent by Augment. Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents: it starts with the living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Try it for yourself at https://www.augmentcode.com/product/intent—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

April 3, 2026Episode 6058 min

Every Engineer Is a Manager Now 🤖 — with Chris Lattner

Today’s guest is Chris Lattner, one of the most important engineers for modern computing. Chris invented key compiler infrastructure tech like LLVM and MLIR, but he’s also the inventor of the Swift language, a key contributor in bringing Google TPUs to market, and a lot more. Today he’s the founder and CEO of Modular, where he’s reinventing AI infrastructure to make software portable across GPUs and platforms.So with Chris, we talked about his vision for AI and computing. We talked about how Modular’s mission makes us closer to a future where AI is open and portable. And we talked about open source, how AI is both empowering and straining contributors, how it’s changing intellectual property, and what workflows we need to change as engineers.And finally, we discussed how AI is changing software craftsmanship, how he’s bullish about junior engineers, and a lot more.(00:00) Preview(02:11) Introduction(04:05) What is Modular?(06:13) Sponsor break(07:10) From CPU to GPU landscape(10:46) Objective-C Swift analogy(15:37) What is Modular for Chris?(17:37) The love for building(20:21) Chris' view on AI future(23:48) AI and open source(29:34) Figuring out new workflows(31:22) On licenses and copyright(33:42) High quality software(35:21) Coding faster with AI(41:27) The landscape of junior engineers(48:22) AI amplifies the good and the bad(52:21) Modular ceremonies(55:26) Tech debt—Today’s sponsor is Intent by Augment. Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents: it starts with the living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Try it for yourself at https://www.augmentcode.com/product/intent—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

March 20, 2026Episode 5951 min

What Comes After the IDE 🖥 — with Amelia Wattenberger

Today's guest is Amelia Wattenberger, former principal research engineer at GitHub and now partner at Sutter Hill Ventures.But she's also a product lead at Augment Code, where she developed Intent, a developer workspace for orchestrating AI coding agents and delivering complex work. So this is a fascinating chat into the future and the present of software development with someone who has clearly been at the very frontier of this for many years.(00:00) Preview(01:11) Introduction(03:26) What is "Intent"?(09:56) Splitting agents for best performance(12:32) Spec and subtasks(17:46) Decision and generation(22:15) Features, opinion and abstractions(25:37) The note system(27:41) Attitude is reflected in approach(35:21) Engineers in the new era of crafting(37:14) Managing skills applied to an agent environment(39:46) Orchestrating agents(45:50) The future of deep specialists—Today’s sponsor is Intent by Augment. Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents: it starts with the living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Try it for yourself at https://www.augmentcode.com/product/intent—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

March 6, 2026Episode 5851 min

Leading Beyond the Framework 🧭 — with Richard Hughes-Jones

Today's guest is Richard Hughes-Jones, a professional executive coach with more than 20 years of experience. With Richard, we talked about how to coach tech leaders through uncertainty and everything that's going on with AI, how to navigate it, how we should think about our role, and what it means to step outside of the framework.We also explored how to leverage AI for coaching, how to blend human and AI advice to get the best of both worlds.(00:00) Preview(01:08) Introduction(02:26) Richard's journey into coaching(04:23) Sponsor break(05:19) Coaching without engineering background(07:27) Most common challenges(11:39) Helping people in uncertainty(19:10) Good for the team Vs Good for the business(22:13) Are frameworks limiting?(27:10) Creating a personal framework(31:49) Am I trying to be the hero?(34:35) Usual questions(39:07) AI and coachingLink to article mentioned in the interview: https://richardhughesjones.substack.com/p/052-special-edition-what-i-learned—Today’s sponsor is Intent by Augment. Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents: it starts with the living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Try it for yourself at https://www.augmentcode.com/product/intent—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

February 20, 2026Episode 5755 min

How to Master Behavioral Interviews 🎤 — with Austen McDonald

Today's guest is Austen McDonald, former hiring committee chair at Meta, and author of the book, "Mastering Behavioral Interviews." Austen, in his career, conducted more than 1,000 interviews and coached more than 200 engineers, and is here today to tell us everything about why behavioral interviews are more important than ever and how to run them right, as a candidate and as a recruiter.(00:00) Preview(01:02) Introduction(01:37) Austen' interest in behavioral interviews(06:25) Sponsor break(07:31) Behavioral interviews as a senior or a junior engineer(09:55) The question behind a question: signal areas(13:09) Fails in behavioral interviews(16:38) Decode, select, deliver(17:15) The eight areas(19:02) How company culture reflects in hiring(21:59) Assessing company's culture as a candidate(23:49) The big three questions(29:26) Preparing for the big three questions(37:37) Deliver a story(40:28) Good preparation process(43:15) Do not lie(46:14) Recruiter side: biases(51:42) Candidate experience with AI: value questions—Today’s sponsor is Intent by Augment. Intent is a developer workspace built for orchestrating agents: it starts with the living spec that updates as agents make progress, so every task stays aligned with no manual coordination. Try it for yourself at https://www.augmentcode.com/product/intent—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

February 6, 2026Episode 5640 min

Building Apps with Your Voice 🎤— with Paige Bailey

Today's guest is Paige Bailey, Developer Relations Lead at Google DeepMind. And before that, Principal Product Manager at GitHub, where she launched Copilot and several other AI products.With Paige, we went through a quick demo of how to build and deploy a fully functioning application just with your voice, one that includes accessing your camera, manipulating pictures, and having AI doing a live interview with you to fill out your profile. So this is a bit different episode than usual, so I encourage you to check out the full video, where Paige shares her screen and goes through all the steps.And we also talked about what's coming about AI, how engineers should think about their work, and how the Google DeepMind team is changing with all roles, basically converging to one. So let's dive right into the action.(00:00) Preview(01:32) Introduction(02:12) The best era for software engineers(05:36) Navigating AI tools(06:22) AI Studio Build demo(13:53) Choosing the right AI model(17:34) Prompts and intuition(19:13) Antigravity demo(23:43) Delegating and working with AI(26:00) AI at team level(28:38) Changes in product development teams(30:45) Next stages in working with AI(37:54) Rethink software engineering—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