Latest
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Why everyone’s suddenly talking about AI agents
What exactly are AI agents and how are they different from AI assistants?
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Should JavaScript really be split in two?
A radical new proposal for JavaScript has divided opinion over who stands to benefit.
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Learning to trust generative AI
Love it or loathe it, engineering leaders have to learn to live with generative AI, but can you ever really trust the model?
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Feeling the squeeze? GreenOps offers a sustainable solution for busy engineering teams
Discover how GreenOps empowers engineering teams to integrate sustainability into their workflows, building on FinOps and DevOps principles for efficiency and environmental impact.
Editor’s picks
That’s a wrap for LeadDev Berlin 2024!
Watch all of the talk videos from an incredible two days with a digital pass.
Essential reading
How to build an effective technical strategy
Building a tech strategy requires a lot of moving parts. Learn about what routes to take and whether decisions should be top-down.
On our Technical Direction playlist
Managing architecture
Lutz Hühnken talks about the importance of a strategic approach to software architecture, that prevents teams from becoming architecture firefighters, who spent an excessive amount of energy applying short-term fixes to architectural problems.
Technical Vision vs. Technical Strategy: The difference and why it matters
Jonathan Maltz digs into the nuts and bolts of setting a successful technical strategy. Startin by talking about the difference between technical vision and technical strategy.
Writing your technical strategy
Bruce Wang talks about Writing your technical strategy (psst, it doesn’t have to feel like a Squid Game) at LeadDev Together in February 2022.
Good technical debt
Jon Thornton discusses how this framework was used to rapidly build and ship Squarespace’s Email Campaigns product in less than 15 months. Along the way, you’ll get several practical guidelines for how tech debt can supercharge your technical investments.
Creating, defining, and refining an effective tech strategy
Having a defined tech strategy creates alignment and keeps everyone on the same page. So how can you ensure yours is most effective? Panelists Anna Shipman, Randy Shoup, Papanii Nene Okai, Nimisha Asthagiri and Anand Mariappan share their tips.
That’s a wrap Berlin!
Catch-up on all the Lead Berlin 2024 talks with a digital pass.
More about Technical Direction
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Whatever happened to Big Data?
In the world of AI, cloud services, and automation, the tools and expertise engineering managers need to mine large-scale data sets are changing, fast.
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What you need to know about Biden’s AI executive order
US President Joe Biden has announced a sweeping executive order covering artificial intelligence. Here’s everything you need to know about how the US government is looking to regulate the technology.
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How OpenAI fought off security threats and GPU shortages to scale ChatGPT
The rapid rise of ChatGPT exposed OpenAI to a myriad of scaling issues and security threats, leading to some unique mitigation approaches.
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Balancing build vs buy decisions in a post-boom world
The question of whether to build software in-house or rely on third-party vendors is more fraught than ever, as budgets come under scrutiny and internal teams get stretched after waves of layoffs.
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Building a cloud architecture that can scale to any challenge
By building a cloud architecture that could meet the complex needs of international expansion, Nubank has established a more robust and flexible cloud infrastructure.
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OpenAI explains how they scaled ChatGPT
Ahead of his talk at LeadDev West Coast in October, OpenAI’s Evan Morikawa goes behind-the-scenes on the challenges they faced scaling ChatGPT, the constant need to reset as a leader, and how GPUs don’t in fact grow on trees.
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How AI changes engineering management
The rise of competent AI coding assistants could shift the role of software engineering managers considerably. Are you ready for that change?
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Tech debt for engineering leaders: How a shortcut today impacts tomorrow
Technical debt is a ubiquitous problem for engineering managers, but what does it actually mean and how can you best attack it while balancing the other needs of the business?
Top Technical Direction videos
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Managing the marathon: Leading teams through lengthy migration projects
In this short talk, Lawrence will reflect on his experience leading teams through multi-year migration projects.
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Iterate to Greatness: Building High Performance, AI-native Engineering Teams
In this talk, we’ll discuss how Vercel transitioned to an AI-native company and how you too can operate highly effective, AI-native product engineering teams, from the tools used to the way to stay organised amid the rapidly changing pace of AI.
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Making smart investments: A framework for maximizing your ROI in technical decisions
In this talk, we’re going to explore a framework for evaluating the return on investment (ROI) of complex tech decisions, illustrated with real-world examples that highlight both the traps to avoid and the paths to success. I’ll share methods for pinpointing key metrics that matter, and how to design experiments or proof-of-concepts to measure ROI. Finally we will discuss the importance of staying objective and adaptable throughout the process.
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Data Science Demystified
This talk gives an overview of Data Science and delves deep into the pipeline data scientists use – right from fetching the data, the Python tools and frameworks used to creating models, gaining insights and telling a story.
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How to use technology radars to make transparent tech decisions
The talk centres around the benefits of building such a tool, such as transparency, alignment and faster onboarding.
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Tech debt as innovation, reframing this forever problem as an opportunity
Tech Debt is a natural by-product of software engineering, yet we, in the software industry, don’t attack it with the same excitement or fervor as we do with product innovation or feature development.
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Start with an exit in mind: How to be effective by being selfish as a staff engineer
Staff engineers often get overwhelmed by long-term ownership of critical projects. This talk explores how to avoid burnout by starting every project with an exit strategy—whether transferring ownership, pausing or bootstrapping a team.
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Explosive overflow: Lessons from rocket science
Thirty-nine seconds after launch, the Ariane 5 rocket exploded—caused by software design errors. In this talk, Mark analyzes these historical flaws to explore key lessons in resilience and product security. We’ll discuss testing, validation, legacy code, design assumptions, and the challenge of proving when things don’t go wrong.