Refactoring Podcast

How to Manage Humans 🎽 — with Rands

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 Introduction02:49 Rands first steps in writing06:06 Sponsor07:46 Does writing help in managing?13:05 Michael and Rands15:29 Managing humans and chaos19:56 Mentoring fresh managers21:31 Rands' managing style28:27 Feedbacks30:25 Changes in engineering management33:43 AI: a future without layers40:10 Testing a thesis42:40 AI Interation = People Interation45:07 What is not going to change48:38 The 10%—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

The Vercel Journey 🔺 — with Guillermo Rauch

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

How to Integrate AI in the Dev Process 🪄 — with Ori Keren

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 Introduction01:59 Development productivity in 202508:29 Code creation process and AI10:46 Coding and bottlenecks15:05 Cognitive unload using AI16:48 The journey of AI adoption21:50 AI native environment24:57 How teams are changing28:35 More AI = More development30:40 The skeptcisim about coding with AI33:50 Removing the toil from coding35:31 AI help outside coding41:50 How to integrate AI in a company44:38 Go with the (AI) flow45:34 Education in prompting—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

Measuring and Improving Developer Experience 📊 — with Abi Noda

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

Open-source, complexity & AI coding 🔧 — with Salvatore "Antirez" Sanfilippo

Today's guest is Salvatore Sanfilippo, also known as Antirez!Salvatore is the creator of Redis, an open source data store used by hundreds of thousands of developers across the world. And he's also a writer. He published the popular sci-fi novel called Wohpe, which anticipated a lot of what is happening today with AI.With Salvatore, we talked about open source — what makes a project successful and how to make it successful for its maintainers. Then we discussed how Salvatore uses AI for extremely complex coding, which makes him 5x faster than without AI. And finally, I asked him about his writing work and what is the experience of writing a novel versus a software project.02:55 Introduction06:47 Salvatore's life priorities12:40 Develop an open source project in 2025 18:14 Being a generalist with AI support19:25 Making an open source project sustainable23:54 Complexity of modern front-end development24:58 Big Tech, complexity and open source30:19 Escaping the complexity loop33:40 The rebirth of fullstack through AI34:53 How Salvatore creates code with AI41:16 Does AI increase code productivity?44:14 The importance of the right prompt47:06 Writing tests in the AI era of development50:49 Whope, Salvatore's sci-fi novel53:28 Writing a novel and writing code—This episode is brought to you by https://workos.com—Some show notes:• Salvatore's website: https://antirez.com/• Salvatore's Youtube:    / @antirez  • Wohpe:   / wohpe  —You can also find this at:📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9d...📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club