This episode draws on insights from the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey to equip leaders with ways to navigate the current AI landscape and capture value beyond the hype.

This episode provides insights and strategies to successfully navigate AI adoption in engineering teams. Learn how to build developer confidence and create environments that drive real results beyond the hype.

Ryan welcomes Pia Nilsson, GM for Backstage and head of developer experience at Spotify, to discuss the evolution and adoption of Backstage, the impact of AI on dev experience, and how Spotify approaches platform engineering and standardization to help teams solve for specific needs.

Phoebe Sajor

Whether you're leading an engineering team today or preparing for an AI-integrated future, this conversation provides practical insights into where AI can have the greatest impact on your software delivery process.

Ryan and Eira welcome Erin Yepis, Senior Analyst at Stack Overflow, to the show to discuss the newly released 2025 Developer Survey results. They explore the decline in trust in AI tools, shifts in popular programming technologies, and the patterns Erin saw in salary growth among developers.

Phoebe Sajor

Spoiler: Yes.

Eira May

Research scientist John Flournoy sits down with Ryan and Eira to dive into the recent research around developer experience, including the nuances of measuring productivity, the potential reasons for variability in developer performance, and the impacts of collaboration and competition on developer efficiency.

Phoebe Sajor

Jon Skeet, the first Stack Overflow user with a million reputation, sits down with Ryan to share his wealth of knowledge on all things development: the deceptively simple but actually complicated problem of timezones, the importance of clear documentation for programmers, handling breaking changes and upgrading legacy systems, and the need for improved communication skills among developers.

Phoebe Sajor

It’s Java’s 30th anniversary! Ryan welcomes back Georges Saab,  Senior VP of Development for the Java Platform Group and Chair of the OpenJDK Governing Board, to reflect on Java’s changes over the last five years.

Phoebe Sajor

Ryan and Ben welcome Tulsee Doshi and Logan Kilpatrick from Google's DeepMind to discuss the advanced capabilities of the new Gemini 2.5.

Phoebe Sajor

Will Wilson, CEO and co-founder of Antithesis, joins Ryan and Stack Overflow senior director of engineering Ben Matthews on the podcast to discuss deterministic simulation testing, the pitfalls of chaos testing in an AI-driven world, and how testing can help developers deal with technical debt.

Phoebe Sajor

Matthew McCullough, VP of Product for Android Developer Experience, sits down with Ryan to talk advancements in Android development, enhancing developer efficiency and reducing routine toil, and the application of Gemini AI models to improve software toolchains.

Phoebe Sajor

Deepak Singh, VP of Developer Agents and Experiences at AWS, helps Ryan break down the hype around agentic AI in software development. They cover the definition and real-world functionality of AI agents, how developers can integrate them into existing workflows, and the importance of establishing guardrails to ensure trust and security in agentic AI.

Eira May

Some high-level takeaways, with more to come.

Eira May

Single individuals make less of a difference to the success or failure of a technology project than you might think (and that’s a good thing).

Eira May

Ben and Ryan are joined by Cortex cofounders Anish Dhar, CEO, and Ganesh Datta, CTO. Cortex offers an internal developer portal that helps devs document and reinforce organizational best practices and improve developer productivity. The portal includes features like scorecards that incentivize developers to improve their work and AI-powered search to make finding information easier.

Eira May

For this episode, we spoke with Carol Lee, PhD, principal research scientist in the Developer Success Lab at Pluralsight, about her research into code review anxiety, how developers are coping, and how a workbook can help.

Eira May

The home team welcomes developer and software consultant Ben Borra to the show for a wide-ranging conversation about developer productivity, the value of positive feedback and identifying quick wins, the impact of code assistants on devs’ everyday work, and the challenges of system rewrites.

Eira May

Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js and Deno, tells us about his journey into software development and the creation of Node.js. He explains why he started Deno, a new JavaScript runtime. Ryan also introduces JSR, an alternative to NPM, and emphasizes the importance of security in the JavaScript ecosystem. Plus: Thoughts on the future of JavaScript, including the role of TypeScript and bridging the gap between server-side and browser JavaScript.

Eira May

The home team convenes to discuss AI deepfakes, the legal implications of generating an AI version of a dead comedian or a famous singer-songwriter, whether leaderboard rankings for AI models reflect reality, and the relationship between agile development and burnout.

Eira May

On today’s sponsored episode, Ben and Ryan talk with James Simmonds and Tristan Sheppard, both principal software engineers and engineering leads in the power trading department at Shell, about how a century-old company is working to evolve into a place where developers and engineers love to work.

Eira May

How does our emphasis on impostor syndrome keep us from having bigger, harder conversations about how to improve life for developers?

Eira May

Dr. Cat Hicks, Director of Pluralsight Flow’s Developer Success Lab, joins Ben and Eira to talk about why ICs deserve recognition for their contributions to big projects (and how they can get it).

Eira May

DevX in energy sectors, fox talk, and Elixir loops and lists.

Eira May, Cassidy Williams