Social Engineering with James Lai
Feed Update Issues
We're having trouble fetching new episodes from this podcast's RSS feed. Last successful update was 2026-02-06 10:49:11.618112.
Episodes
Hardware for Software Engineers
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our workstations are our de-facto tools of the trade. Yet many engineers spend little time investing in or improving their workstations. Having a grea...
What Your Company Actually Values
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
No one tends to think twice about their "company values". They tend to be meaningless words posted on the website or on a poster hung on the...
How to Have a Good PR
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Pull requests are something we'll make thousands of times in our careers, but it's easy for them to go off the rails. Problems can emerge fr...
Common Agile Failures and Fixes
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Agile, when properly implemented, can be an exceedingly powerful philosophy on software development. But gone wrong, it can often hinder and harm more...
What Even is Agile?
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Most companies proclaim to "be Agile", but what does that even mean? Are they? Is that a good thing? And what are all these other terms we h...
Event Loop: Responding to the Amazon Layoffs
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a bonus Event Loop episode keeping you in the loop regarding current events. Amazon just announced they are laying off around 14,000 employees...
Preventing Burnout
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Burnout is unfortunately something that happens to a lot of us in our industry, and it can be an absolutely debilitating experience. In this episode, ...
The Unreasonable Risk of Rewrites
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We are often tempted to rewrite software - who doesn't like a new greenfield project? With all the promise of cleaner code, architecture, and fix...
Software Estimation and Other Lies
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We are notoriously bad at software estimation, yet we will be asked to do it hundreds if not thousands of times in our careers. Why are we so inaccura...
Build vs Buy
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As engineers, we are often faced with the question if we should build or buy a piece of software. In this episode, I attempt to provide a framework fo...
Engineering is Social
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Engineering is fundamentally a social activity. This might sound completely counter intuitive, but it's an important reality for understanding th...
Ya Ain't Gonna Need It
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most powerful and important axioms in software engineering, in my opinion, is "Ya Ain't Gonna Need It". This axiom tells us ...
The Problem with Technical Interviews
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Technical interviews have been broken for a while. In this episode, I discuss how and why our process is broken, how the industry got here, explore ho...
AI is Not Going to Take Your Job
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI is everywhere, but is it going to take our jobs as software engineers? Should we start looking for other careers? Is it safe to enter this industry...