What Broke in Tech: Code Quality, AI Guardrails, and the Evolving Software Engineer

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub start the episode discussing "Reverse Engineer Anything," noting mixed results: an engineer got a good-looking clone of apps like Strava, but teardowns (including one of an alleged Adobe Suite copy) suggest it's closer to a clean-room spec-and-implementation that misses deeper functionality, serving mainly as a proof point that systems can write lots of code. They then shift to "software factories," describing internal agent-driven SDLCs and dashboards that resemble Kanban boards, tracking ticket status, assigned agents, token usage, and cost. They debate whether teams should build or buy such factory UIs, why no clear market leader has emerged, and whether chat-based interfaces or Kanban-style visuals are the right control plane—especially as agent scale may break familiar tools like Git and traditional roll-up reporting. 00:00 Cold Open Preview 00:18 Podcast Intro 01:06 Reverse Engineering Examples 05:53 Clean Room Explained 07:48 Why It Matters 08:23 Software Factory Dashboards 10:27 Build Or Buy Debate 17:05 Viral Factory Rig 20:00 Personalized IDE Analogy 22:10 When Git Stops Scaling 26:13 CTO View Across Teams 28:11 Work Units And Abstraction 30:03 Chief Of Staff Agents 32:43 Chat As The Dashboard 35:34 Visual Learners Want Diagrams 39:05 Listener Shoutouts And Wrap 40:28 Closing Credits Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/  Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding  

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub continue to recap Gergely Orosz's "State of the Tech Industry" talk and focus on what "broke" and "what's next." They argue that machine-generated code is overwhelming pull requests and code review, exposing that many organizations' quality gates were implicitly built around human speed, and they discuss how 98% uptime is becoming an unacceptable norm. They connect this to the need for an "AI coding safety layer" of guardrails, static analysis, verification, and testing, while noting the challenge of convincing stakeholders to invest in quality. They explore workforce morale and fatigue driven by rapid change, heightened expectations, more incidents, job instability, and a less gratifying shift from hands-on coding to supervising agents and systems. They conclude that computer science and cross-disciplinary learning remain valuable and that turmoil creates opportunity, especially for younger engineers. 00:00 Cold Open 01:22 Ski Talk Banter 02:57 Recap Pragmatic Engineer  05:10 Guardrails Are The New Craft 09:45 Selling Quality Investment 14:43 Morale Fatigue Causes 17:14 Incidents And Reliability 18:47 Job Aesthetics Changing 19:23 From Coding to Orchestration  21:26 Chihuly Visionary Analogy 23:41 Will Education Adapt 28:06 Liberal Arts and Curiosity 30:05 Bootcamps vs Core Skills 32:58 Systems Research Path 35:21 Opportunity in Turmoil 35:52 Credits and Outro Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/  Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding #IndustryChange #IndustryTrends #IndustryEvolution #WorkforceTrends #LeadershipInTech #FutureOfWork  

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss a Pragmatic Engineer talk on the state of the tech industry in 2026, focusing on what changed and what hasn't. They argue this is a "golden age" of building software due to AI, while acknowledging current "creative destruction" that may ultimately make the industry leaner. Key changes include agentic software factories where people increasingly don't read code, and a shift toward open-weight models for cost and data-sovereignty reasons, including local/on-prem inference. They note core software fundamentals (system design, resilience, security, validation) and organizational friction (alignment, clear requirements) remain unchanged. They also explore remote work's evolution, speculate about smaller squads and team structures, and end by deferring "what broke" and "what's next" to a future episode. 00:00 Episode Teaser 00:26 Show Intro and Banter 01:28 Time Travel and Quantum Aside 02:49 Was Tech Better Five Years Ago 04:47 AI Tools Golden Age 06:53 Creative Destruction Now 07:59 Reverse Engineer Anything Debate 11:03 Remote Work Then And Now 13:31 Pragmatic Engineer Summary Setup 14:50 Agentic Factories and Open Models 17:47 Open Weights Local Inference 24:14 What Has Not Changed 26:19 Org Structure And Smaller Teams 31:47 Wrap Up and Next Episode Preview 32:24 Credits and Outro Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/  Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding #TechIndustry #AgenticSoftware #QuantumMechanics #RemoteWork #SystemDesign #OrganizationalFriction #CreativeDestruction #FutureOfTech

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub interview software pioneer Kent Beck about his background (JUnit, test-driven development, extreme programming, Agile Manifesto, and his book "Tidy First?") and his current focus on "augmented development" with AI, which he calls a "genie." Beck argues that while AI shortens the build–feedback loop, it can also remove productive struggle that builds competence, agency, and flow, leaving developers exhausted and hollow. He critiques the "agent" metaphor, long tool latencies, and productivity measured as more code, proposing tools optimized for sub-second feedback, smaller safe increments, and even pushing changes to production thousands of times a day. Beck predicts programming demand will rise (Jevons Paradox), but warns mid-level "paycheck" developers must adapt. He advises leaders to use the tools themselves, build trust, and adopt via the technology adoption curve rather than mandates and layoffs. 00:00 Cold Open 00:22 Meet Kent Beck 04:31 Early Computing Origins 07:49 XP and AI Shift 11:29 Augmented Development Feel 13:06 Struggle Builds Competence 17:18 Beyond Agents Metaphor 20:39 Toil Versus Struggle 25:03 Flow and Feedback Loops 27:38 Amanuensis Junior Programmer 29:52 Manager Mode Reality 32:54 Optimize for One Second 36:35 Tech Cycles And Humans 41:01 Jobs And Jevons Paradox 46:56 Rethinking Productivity 52:15 Limbo Micro Deployments 56:01 Tool Seeds Sharing 59:34 Debugger Joy And TDD 01:02:19 Leading Adoption With Trust 01:08:57 Wrap Up And Credits Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/  Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  Kent Beck: https://kentbeck.com/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding #AIRevolution #ExtremeProgramming #AgileManifesto #KentBeck #TechPioneers #FutureOfCoding #AIConversations #CodingCommunity #AIChallenges #HumanSideOfTech  

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss TaskRabbit's overnight AWS region migration from us-west-1 to us-west-2, describing the months of preparation, detailed runbook, large war-room call, minor cleanup issues, and why periodic region moves can serve as valuable "hygiene" to relearn and document complex systems while advancing disaster recovery and business continuity. They then explain tabletop exercises as structured incident-response drills designed to uncover gaps in process and documentation, sharing scenario ideas like data deletion, token leaks, cloud outages, ransomware, and internal actors, including an embezzlement case where the perpetrator joined incident response. The conversation touches on an alleged AI sandbox escape involving Hugging Face, then debates claims that "unit tests are dead," arguing AI makes end-to-end testing easier but unit, integration, contract, and mutation testing remain important—especially for edge cases and dependency failures—and that agents can now generate extensive test coverage.   00:00 Cold Open Banter 00:35 Light Bulb Struggles 01:12 TaskRabbit Region Move 05:23 Tabletop Exercises Explained 10:06 Designing Scenarios 13:37 Insider Threat Tabletop 16:51 AI Sandbox Escape Story 21:19 Unit Tests Are Dead 25:16 Why E2E Misses Edge Cases 28:30 Mutation Testing Explained 31:25 Integration Tests Basics 33:23 Contract and API Testing 38:27 Third Party Outage Example 41:55 Golden Age of Validation 43:59 Wrap Up and Credits   Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/ Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/   #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding #AWS #AWSMigration #DisasterRecovery #TabletopDrills #TabletopExercises #UnitTesting #EndToEndTesting #APITesting #Microservices #IncidentResponse #UnitTestsAreDead #UnitTestsAren'tDead #TestingStrategies #AIStories

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss growing fear about AI among engineers and managers, framing it as an "adaptive moment" requiring leaders to disrupt old stabilizing practices. They explore concerns that AI lowers the barrier for others to change systems, increasing accountability, on-call risk, and architectural drift—problems that existed pre-AI but are now intensified. Their proposed response is to strengthen the software factory/SDLC with non-human, deterministic guardrails: robust automated tests, CI/CD quality gates, mutation testing, and better observability, rather than human gatekeeping or fiefdoms. They share examples of risky AI agent behavior (attempting to access credentials to reorder Jira tickets) and real-world harm from AI claim adjudication pilots, concluding that best practices are now the floor and that engineers who build quality gates become more valuable. 00:00 Cold Open 01:04 AI Fear in Engineering 02:00 Adaptive Leadership Moment 03:55 Software Factory Mindset 06:10 Fear of Accountability 08:09 Old Problem New Pressure 11:58 Non Human Quality Gates 13:41 Scaling Creates Fiefdoms 16:34 Architecture Agent Example 20:26 Apocolyptic AI Concerns 23:51 AI in Medicare Risks 32:29 Best Practices Are Floor 33:41 Wrap Up and Subscribe Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/  Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding #SoftwareFactory #AIChallenges #EngineeringManagement #AdaptiveLeadership #QualityGates #TechTalkingPoints #InnovationStrategy #LeadershipInsights #TechInnovation #AIThreat #AIFear #AIInTech

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, host Brad Hefta-Gaub is joined by guest Frank Bravo, a Bay Area technologist who spent 30 years as CTO in local media, helping put a newspaper's full editorial content online in 1994, and now serves as CTO at ProLegal, a legal services startup. Frank describes modernizing an old Act! database into a custom CRM, launching ProLegal Suite, and building systems that integrate with Uber and Lyft to schedule client rides on a lien. He explains how ProLegal uses AI to analyze case documents and train models on company-specific context, while keeping humans in the loop and reviewing AI-generated code. The conversation focuses on simplifying technology for non-technical users, the importance of shared terminology, troubleshooting and telemetry, and advice for CTOs on communicating clearly without acronyms.   00:00 Cold Open 00:41 Meet Frank Bravo 01:28 From Newsrooms to Startups 05:01 Building ProLegal Tech 08:18 AI in Legal Funding 12:04 Translating Tech for Humans 17:34 Choosing the Right Solution 18:41 Picking Podcast Topics with AI 21:58 Trust and Tech Backlash 26:01 How Fast Tech Changed 28:09 Phones as Invisible Tech 29:30 Wi-Fi vs Internet Confusion 32:30 Wired Beats Wireless 33:13 Buffering and Brand Names 34:33 Explaining Tech Simply 38:28 Empathy Through Support 41:49 AI as a Thought Partner 43:35 Telemetry for Troubleshooting 46:21 Career Through Line 48:50 Where to Find Frank 49:39 Show Credits and Outro Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  Frank Bravo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabravo/  Your Tech Makeover Podcast: https://www.yourtechmakeover.com/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding #LegalTech #TechSimplified #AIInsights #ProLegal #InnovativeTech #BridgingTech #FrankBravo #Telemetry #TechBacklash #Trust #Troubleshooting

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss how AI is changing software engineering referencing Kent Beck's idea that AI makes much existing knowledge less useful while making a smaller portion far more valuable. They describe teams collaborating through "cohorts" of AI agents for PR review and adversarial checking, and debate whether engineers will be evaluated on agent quality versus their ability to direct and manage agents like a driver or jockey. Scott shares TaskRabbit's approach to shifting from organic AI adoption to "systemic usage" using an AI maturity matrix, gap analysis, and incremental rollout of agents (code review, security, architecture) with a six-week versioned cadence to help the whole organization keep up. They address skepticism, incentives in for-profit organizations, and the rapid pace of AI tooling innovation.   00:00 Cold Open 00:28 Podcast Kickoff 01:22 Uncle Bob Clip Reactions 02:16 Kent Beck Tease 03:39 Engineers With Agent Teams 05:19 Prompting vs Building Agents 10:16 Managing Agents Like Juniors 13:08 Handling AI Holdouts 17:20 Why Build Beats Craft 19:26 Software as Puzzle Pieces 21:38 TaskRabbit AI Maturity Plan 23:56 From Organic to Systemic 26:19 Six Week Change Cadence 27:11 Handling Corporate Agenda Fears 29:02 Why AI Becomes Inevitable 33:28 Leading With Growth Mindset 35:29 Imperfect Tools Fair Comparisons 38:54 Innovation Pace And Morale 42:34 Dark Factory And SDLC Evolution 47:12 Outages CD ROMs And Wrap Up 49:25 Closing Credits   Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/  Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub interview Scott Hanson, founder and CTO of Ambiq, a company focused on ultra-low-power chips for "intelligence everywhere," with 300M+ units shipped into wearables and other devices. Hansen traces Ambiq's origins with University of Michigan smart-dust research and his PhD work on subthreshold computing—running transistors at extremely low voltages for quadratic energy savings—then explains the challenges of making it manufacturable across temperature and process variation. He discusses university IP spinout mechanics, patent timing vs. publication, and his transition from founder CEO to CTO under a professional CEO. The conversation covers Ambiq's Apollo SoCs and the newer Apollo "Atomic" NPU direction enabling much larger edge AI models, new memory innovations, and future camera and conversational-interface use cases, plus hardware development realities like long feedback loops, simulation/FPGA prototyping, and high mask/tooling costs. 00:00 Cold Open 00:19 Meet Ambiq And The Guest 02:25 Smart Dust Origins At Michigan 03:21 Subthreshold Computing Explained 04:53 From Lab Demo To Manufacturable 06:05 Bio Inspired Power Ideas 08:25 Choosing EE And Finding The Path 10:42 Deciding To Commercialize 13:30 University Spinout And IP Deals 16:35 Papers Versus Patents Strategy 19:06 Founder CEO To CTO Transition 22:30 CTO CEO Partnership 23:49 Ego Shift Support 24:42 Apollo Atomic Overview 27:25 Edge AI Use Cases 29:49 On Device Translation 32:43 Memory Bandwidth Bottlenecks 37:21 Hardware Leadership Tech Debt 40:15 Testing With FPGAs 42:54 Cost Of Chip Tooling 44:33 Wrap Up and Credits Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/  Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  Scott Hanson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-hanson-82707b7/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding #TechInnovation #EnergyEfficient #SiliconChips #SmartWearables #CEOtoCTO #Ambiq #LowPower #EdgeComputing #ElectronicsEngineering #SmartDevices #EdgeAI #SubthresholdComputing #HardwareInnovation #NeuralProcessing #WearTech

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub interview Andy Boettcher, Chief Innovator of DoubleTrack, a boutique data and AI consultancy. Andy recounts his 33 years across systems, development, with 13 years in Salesforce, and how his career shifted into data/AI full-time after ChatGPT's 2022 release. The group compares manufacturing's precise cost estimation to software's people-driven unpredictability, then explores moving beyond AI for cost takeout toward top-line revenue lifts. Andy emphasizes mindset—curiosity, open-ended questions, and "always assuming you're wrong"—and argues resistant engineers will be replaced by those using AI. They discuss using AI as a peer, agentic workflows, real-time CX intelligence for renewals/upsell, ethics, and the need for human-in-the-middle quality gates, scoring rubrics, and trustworthy PR artifacts. 00:00 Cold Open 00:18 Meet the Guest Andy 02:15 Micro Estimating Story 04:17 Why Software Estimates Fail 05:55 DoubleTrack and AI Work 08:15 Revenue vs Cost Takeout 10:39 AI as Peer Partner 13:35 Curiosity New Mindset 17:30 Learning to Prompt Better 20:49 Agents and Orchestration 23:05 Managing Teams of Agents 25:09 Real Time CX Signals 27:09 Scraping The Corners 29:07 Ethics Of Live Upsell 30:17 Async Agents In Practice 34:47 Trust And AI Slop 40:29 Agent Driven Code Reviews 44:52 Rubrics And Quality Gates 48:24 Final Advice And Wrap Up Resources: How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/  Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/  Andy Boettcher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyboettcher/  #TechPodcast #EngineeringPodcast #DevTalks #PodcastForDevs #HowManyCTOs #Podcast #CTOs #CTOPodcast #ChiefTechnologyOfficer #Technology #Engineering #SoftwareDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #TechLeadership #EngineeringLeadership #EngineeringCulture #TechDebates #AI #AIAssistedCoding #AIAssistedProgramming #AIProgramming #AICoding #Innovation #Data #RevenueGeneration #MachineLearning #BusinessStrategy #DataAnalytics #BusinessGrowth