Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots
A podcast about the design, development, and business of great software. Each week thoughtbot is joined by the people who build and nurture the products we love.
Episodes
Would you ever go into business with your family? As a follow up to last week’s episode, we’ve brought on the one and only Doron Birnbaum (twin brother of our dear Sami) to get both sides of the story about their latest business venture.
Doron takes Will and Chad through how the idea to build a tech platform that helps charities understand their data better to improve fundraising campaigns came to be, where the Birnbau...
Would you ever go into business with your family? In this week’s episode, our hosts take on Sami’s tale of becoming the CTO of his brother’s business venture.
After the trio get into some excellent running advice, Sami reminds us of the importance of validating the product to make sure the market will actually use what you’ve built. Will reflects on the importance of a Document of Expectations to weed out p...
Sami is back this week with Mike McQuaid, CTPO and Homebrew Project Leader, as they take a deep dive into the importance of open source maintainers in modern software engineering.
With 18 years of experience reducing developer friction and scaling open source software, Mike discusses the commonalities and differences between open source and proprietary software audiences, impact of large data centres on both the environment and wo...
Will is joined this week by personal finance expert, speaker, business leader Jesse Mecham, founder of You Need A Budget (or YNAB if you are very busy and important).
In this episode, to celebrate the release of his new book ‘Never Worry About Money Again’, Jesse dives into how YNAB came to be, from spreadsheet to the interface it is today, the trials and tribulations the business went through over the years, before go...
Will is back in the host seat this week to chat to Jorge Marubia, Principal Programmer at 37signals, about his previous experience using Lexxy and Basecamp.
In this episode, Jorge goes into depth about BaseCamp 5, how his team got through a memory leaking situation after its launch, and Lexxy being open source, before diving into the question on everyone’s lips recently - what his thoughts are on AI and how it will affect Ju...
Sami is back this week with Gender, Climate and Energy Specialist Dr. Victoria Plutshack, as they dive into what’s really going on with AI Data Centres in Scotland and the UK.
Make sure you’ve popped your kettles on as Victoria discusses the impact of large data centres on both the environment and women in the workplace, whether it’s possible to use AI and have the data centres source their energy responsibly, be...
Our host Sami is joined this week by Joe Cohen, Legal Innovation Partner at Harvey AI, to discuss the use of AI within the legal and professional services, and how it could impact the speed, quality and efficiency of lawyers doing legal work.
Joe dives into his career journey, Harvey AI’s adoption rate success within law firms, what the future career growth could look like for Junior Partners being taught by AI, and the comp...
Our hosts Chad and Sami team up this week to discuss AI code bases and whether they can be built to be developer friendly and with best practices in mind.
After a brief chat about the World Cup (and how it may affect the June thoughtbot event in London!) Sami dives into a recent code audit he did on a base that was built with AI using Spec Driven Development. Chad covers security concerns and why it’s important to have human...
Chad talks with guest Andy Budd, Design Leadership Coach & Venture Partner at Seedcamp, as they look back over Andy’s time at Clearleft, the company he co-founded back in 2005.
Andy discusses employee trust ownership, how it both benefits and protects your employees, and has the potential to keep your business going for generations to come rather than living and dying by the founders interest. Chad also announces that th...
Chad shares a recent pivot in ReadySetGo’s development, where they see the app entering a founder’s development and what they’re doing to ensure a wide set of features for all users.
Our hosts also pick apart the impact of AI on developers, how valuable is speed when working with AI, is it still a good measure of success when coding, and Sami takes a moment to ask the all knowing ChadGPT about his excessive runn...
Chad talks with a returning guest from the early days of the show, Brennan Dunn, founder of RightMessage. Featuring nearly 600 episodes ago on episode 18 of Giant Robots, Brennan is back to talk about how things have changed for him since his first appearance in 2012.
Brennan reflects on working as a contractor and growing to become a company of one, why the scaling size of a business doesn’t always equate to more productivi...
Sami swims against the tide of AI with Emma Barnes, CEO of Consonance, as they examine the more controversial idea of being anti-AI.
Emma explains why her publishing business is anti-AI and the benefits of coding for yourself, how AI is having a negative impact on different aspects of our daily lives, why big corporations are hyping it up so much, and Sami asks what is it about AI that keeps drawing people in.
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Sami talks with Quentin de Metz, Co-Founder and CTO of Pennylane, about the journey of building a startup into an established company.
Quentin provides his unique perspective of what it’s like to be a founder with an engineering background, the rapid growth he experienced with Pennylane and the lessons that shape how he now runs the company, and their cautious approach to incorporating AI.
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Our hosts provide a peek behind the scenes as they discuss their work on recent thoughtbot projects.
Chad covers the progress being made on thoughtbot’s new “Ready Set Go” app, the hurdles they’ve encountered so far in development, and the things it needs to achieve in order to compete in it’s field effectively.
Will reflects on a week long project with a non-technical founder and examines how clien...
Chad talks with Raja Rajamannar about how he reimagined marketing and strategy at Mastercard.
Raja explains how he connected the dots between credit cards and healthcare, convincing the board to take a risk on something new in the process, how Mastercard leverages AI with their clients and marketing to stay on top of their brand and competitors, as well as highlighting the mistakes big companies make when it comes to AI.
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Chad, Sami and Will bring a growing issue to the forefront as they discuss whether AI really is to blame for recent industry layoffs.
Our trio examine how AI is being used as a smokescreen for layoffs, how larger companies view AI and their increasing over reliance on it, and Sami provides a real world example of vibe coding to highlight the issues and unreliability of AI code.
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Sami talks with Lord Chris Holmes, Peer of the UK House of Lords, about the increasing need for AI legislation in the UK.
Lord Holmes discusses his efforts to pass his AI Regulation Bill, why it’s taking longer than expected, what we could expect to see happen if we continue to leave AI unchecked, and what differences we can expect to see in AI moving forward.
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Sami talks with Taylor Spencer, Investment Delivery Director, Change & Innovation for British Business Bank, about driving change within a business.
Taylor breaks down the best ways of handling change fatigue and resistance within a business, how and why it impacts his work with British Business Bank, the unique challenges of growth and development they face as a result and the solutions in place to overcome them.
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Sami makes his triumphant return to the Giant Robots Smashing into other Giant Robots Podcast as he and his fellow hosts discuss a brand new tool currently in pre-production at thoughtbot.
Chad lays out his idea for the tool, how he thinks it will differ from other similar products currently available, who it’s for and the considerations needed going in to make it as accessible as possible, and Sami plays devil’s advoc...
Chad talks with Jason Stadther, director of engineering at TrueCar, about striking the right balance with AI in programming and its overall impact on the industry now and in the future.
Together they discuss the impact AI is currently having on junior developers and the potential impact it’s having on their career prospects, what happens to AI when it doesn’t have a reference for newly developed tools, how the inter...
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