Avsnitt
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian dive into EuroStack, an industry-led lobby initiative pushing for European digital sovereignty. Krisztian breaks down what EuroStack is, what it proposes, and why it matters now. They cover the scale of Europe's dependency on non-European tech (260 billion euros per year flowing out), what it actually means to be a "European" company, how public procurement could bootstrap a European tech ecosystem, and why trust in US hyperscalers has finally broken. They also explore the companion site euro-stach.com, a directory of 1620+ European alternatives across 64 categories.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:30 What is EuroStack and why Krisztian is excited about it
4:00 The scale of the problem: 260 billion euros/year leaving Europe
7:00 Europe as a fragmented market vs the US and China
10:00 The three pillars: Buy European, Sell European, Fund European
13:00 How public procurement can generate demand and bootstrap growth
17:00 The 1-to-10 ratio: every public euro attracting 10 private
20:00 Risk of government focus pulling cloud providers away from innovation
24:00 Startup acquisition culture: why European exits go to US companies
28:00 Defining "European": jurisdiction, control, supply chain, no extra-EU restrictions
33:00 AWS sovereign cloud: smoke and mirrors
37:00 Timeline to 2030 and the gradual transition approach
40:00 Geopolitical risk: Ukraine, Starlink, and the dependency reality
44:00 European openness vs American/Chinese protectionism
48:00 Why trust in US tech has finally broken
52:00 Opportunities for European engineers and companies
55:00 Wrap-up
Technologies and Initiatives Mentioned
EuroStack initiative: https://eurostack.eu/Solution directory: https://euro-stack.com
Scaleway - https://www.scaleway.com
OVH Cloud - https://www.ovhcloud.com
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian welcome their first proper guest: Alan Richardson, a 30-year software veteran and testing specialist known as Evil Tester. They dig into testing in the AI era: how to test AI-generated code, whether TDD still makes sense with AI, why self-healing tests are a red flag, and how AI is opening up security and adversarial testing. Alan makes the case for architecture-first development as the key to getting good test output from AI agents.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction and guest intro: Alan Richardson (eviltester.com)
2:00 Why testing matters more in the AI code generation era
5:30 Architecture-first: good code leads to good tests
10:00 Does TDD work with AI? Why it mostly doesn't
14:30 Playwright and UI tests: the abstraction problem
23:00 Information theory and what testing actually is
27:00 Adversarial AI testing: using AI to exploit your own CVEs
33:00 Security scanning tools vs penetration testing with AI
38:30 Domain expertise still matters
43:00 Generalist vs specialist in the AI era
47:00 The junior developer pipeline problem
51:00 Will AI homogenise software and design?
54:00 Wrap-up
Links:
Evil Tester https://eviltester.com
Playwright: https://playwright.dev/
Agentic EQ: https://agentic-qe.dev/
Vite: https://vite.dev/
Claude : https://claude.com/
Snyk: https://snyk.io/
Aikido: https://www.aikido.dev
Hacker One: https://www.hackerone.com/
Wiz: https://www.wiz.io/
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian continue their EU cloud deep dive with a hands-on look at Bunny CDN (bunny.net). Toby used it to launch the new TechLeague podcast website on a static Astro site in under 10 minutes, with Terraform infrastructure, built-in DNS, automatic SSL, and GitHub Actions deployment. They cover the full product offering including CDN, object storage, video streaming with free transcoding, edge scripts, magic containers, and BunnyShield security. They also touch on Tangled.sh, a Helsinki-based distributed git platform built on the AT Protocol that recently raised 3 million euros.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:21 Building the TechLeague website with Astro and Bunny CDN
2:57 Built-in DNS and automatic SSL
4:46 Deploying static files: FTP now, S3 compatibility coming
5:28 Sign-up experience and free credits
6:00 Standard vs Volume network tiers
7:00 Company background: Slovenian, EU-based, 120+ PoPs globally
8:28 Full product overview: storage, stream, DNS, edge, containers
10:18 Video streaming with free transcoding
11:00 Pricing: $0.01/GB storage, $0.01/GB egress
12:27 Limitations: not a full cloud provider
14:30 Magic containers: serverless with anycast IP
17:00 BunnyShield: WAF, DDoS protection, rate limiting
18:49 BunnyOptimizer: on-the-fly image resizing via URL params
19:46 SLA and EU sovereignty
22:00 Can it replace CloudFront?
23:00 getdeploying.com for comparing CDN providers
24:00 Could we host podcast videos on Bunny?
26:50 Reflection: EU cloud is better than we thought
28:05 Tangled.sh: a distributed EU git platform on the AT Protocol
31:14 Wrap-up
Technologies Mentioned
Bunny CDN - https://bunny.net?ref=v8cfwfmh3r
Astro - https://astro.build
Terraform - https://www.terraform.io
Tangled.sh - https://tangled.sh
getdeploying.com - https://getdeploying.com
Scaleway - https://www.scaleway.com
AT Protocol - https://atproto.com
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian share their hands-on experiment building a real group management app using Claude Code and agentic engineering. Toby spent roughly a month's worth of hours prompting Claude to build a cross-platform mobile and web app with Expo, a Node/Express API, Postgres on Scaleway, Hanko authentication and Terraform infrastructure — all without looking at the code. They discuss what worked surprisingly well, what fell apart, the token costs, how agentic engineering compares to managing juniors, and what they would do differently next time.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction: the experiment
1:15 Why Expo for cross-platform mobile and web
2:54 The architect document approach
5:50 How the initial prompt and brainstorming worked
7:45 Not looking at the code
9:05 Context7: giving Claude access to latest API docs
10:35 First pass results
12:46 API and database quality: better than expected
14:40 UI issues: the weak spot
17:20 The bug list testing session
24:23 How sub-agents and parallel work played out
26:07 The Claude usage limit dark pattern
28:15 What it cost: 247 euros for roughly 100 hours of work
31:30 Code quality and lessons from the spec
38:48 The testing problem: agents writing tests for their own code
45:20 The 80/20 rule: great at the fun stuff, weak on the boring
50:30 SaaS disruption: custom software at commodity prices
57:25 How to build LLM memory and learning loops
1:00:25 Summary and what we would do differently
Technologies Mentioned
Claude Code - https://claude.ai/code
Expo - https://expo.dev
Scaleway - https://www.scaleway.com
Hanko - https://hanko.io
Terraform - https://www.terraform.io
Playwright - https://playwright.dev
Context7 - https://context7.com
Node.js - https://nodejs.org
PostgreSQL - https://www.postgresql.org
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian kick off an ongoing series exploring the EU cloud and software stack. Following a previous episode on EU digital sovereignty, they have set themselves a challenge: build their side projects entirely on EU-based services. This episode covers hands-on experience with Forgejo for source code management, Scaleway as a cloud provider, and Hanko for authentication. They share honest feedback on what works, what doesn't, and where the gaps are compared to the big American hyperscalers.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction and the EU sovereignty challenge
1:48 Finding EU alternatives: european-alternatives.eu
3:47 Looking for a GitHub replacement
5:50 Forgejo: the open-source Gitea fork
8:27 What works in Forgejo and what doesn't
10:46 Hosting Forgejo on Scaleway
13:48 The gap between self-hosting and a managed service
15:18 Scaleway overview: regions, services and Terraform support
20:35 Scaleway serverless functions and containers
25:02 Service-to-service authentication
28:34 Deploying Forgejo, databases and runners on Scaleway
36:04 Logging, metrics and Cockpit observability
40:27 Scaleway regions: Amsterdam, Paris, Warsaw
42:25 IAM limitations and enterprise considerations
44:14 Hanko: EU-native user authentication
48:32 Comparing EU stack total cost vs AWS plus Datadog
50:05 What's next: OVH, Hetzner, Infomaniak
Technologies Mentioned
- EU alternatives: https://european-alternatives.eu
- Codeberg: https://codeberg.org
- Forgejo: https://forgejo.org
- Scaleway: https://www.scaleway.com/en/
- OVHcloud: https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/
- UpCloud: https://upcloud.com
- Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com
- Elastx: https://elastx.se/en
- Hanko: https://www.hanko.io
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In this episode, Toby is joined by Xavier (Zavi) for a relaxed conversation about OpenClaw, an open-source project that lets you build a personalised, memory-aware AI assistant running on your own hardware. They share hands-on experiences setting it up with Telegram, Claude and local models, and discuss what makes it feel different from a standard chat interface: persistent memory in markdown files, heartbeat schedules, proactive check-ins, and a soul file that shapes personality over time. The conversation also covers security, prompt injection risks, the skill ecosystem, local model options, and the cultural questions around long-running AI companions.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:33 What is OpenClaw?
1:40 Why does it feel different from a standard AI chat?
3:51 Setting it up: first impressions
4:45 Practical use cases: standups, workshop manuals, tractor parts
7:04 How the heartbeat and memory systems work
9:15 Cron jobs, proactive tasks and the soul file
12:06 The internals: TypeScript, service daemon, CLI and web UI
14:23 Security model: token auth, Tailscale, least-privilege access
17:42 Prompt injection risks
21:30 The skill ecosystem and supply chain risks
28:25 Local model support and failover between providers
32:55 Running local models: gaming laptops, Apple Silicon, VRAM
38:35 Different bot instances developing different personalities
41:45 Long-running AI companions and what they mean for society
44:55 Manipulation risk and the corporate AI companion future
48:15 Practical advice: what to give it access to, and what not to
Technologies Mentioned
OpenClaw - https://openclaw.dev
Claude (Anthropic) - https://www.anthropic.com
Telegram - https://telegram.org
Ollama - https://ollama.ai
Tailscale - https://tailscale.com
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian take a deep look at DevOps and SecOps: where the ideas came from, what they were supposed to mean, how they got warped by the industry, and what good looks like in practice. They cover the waterfall origins of ops as a separate team, the shift-left movement, the build-it-you-run-it principle, why DevOps as a job title makes no sense, platform engineering, and how security is going through the same transformation. They also cover common anti-patterns, DORA metrics, how to get buy-in for a transformation, and what it looks like when it works at scale.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:28 What DevOps was actually supposed to mean
1:57 The waterfall origins: why ops and dev were separate
5:45 Full stack and the rise of the developer-operator
8:40 Why the old model produced poor software quality
11:04 The move to agile and SaaS changed everything
14:15 DevOps as a term: what went wrong
16:08 Platform engineering: the natural next step
21:00 Breaking down the dev vs ops cultural divide
25:47 Real-world example: 10x performance improvement through shared ownership
30:29 Security is going through the same transformation
32:49 Shifting security left: from IDE to CI/CD pipeline
37:02 Reachability scanning and avoiding false positives
40:25 The strangler pattern for security posture improvement
43:34 SecOps as enablers, not gatekeepers
45:34 Common DevOps anti-patterns
53:48 Four-eyes principle done right vs done as Jira ping-pong
1:00:00 DORA metrics: how to measure if your DevOps is working
1:05:39 Management buy-in: why it matters and why it's hard
1:11:43 Real transformation stories
1:20:00 Internal platforms and giving teams real autonomy
Technologies Mentioned
Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io
AWS - https://aws.amazon.com
Grafana Cloud - https://grafana.com/products/cloud
Checkov - https://www.checkov.io
GitHub Actions - https://github.com/features/actions
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian dive into how to structure and scale engineering organisations effectively. Drawing on years of consulting experience, they cover autonomous teams, domain-driven ownership, reducing cross-team handovers, internal platform teams, Conway's Law, the dangers of gatekeeping in ops and security, why self-service tooling is non-negotiable, and what it looks like when organisations are run like a portfolio of internal startups. A practical guide for engineering leaders and anyone building out an eng org.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:43 When does an organisation become the bottleneck?
3:39 Starting with the problem space: divide and conquer
6:22 Autonomous teams and moving away from top-down command
8:03 How to detect misalignment: count the handovers
9:15 Conway's Law: use it intentionally
12:27 Single ownership and full accountability per domain
14:32 Internal service teams: when to spin one up
17:09 Each department as its own startup
19:57 Hero syndrome and knowing what not to build in-house
25:13 Self-service tooling: make it so good they choose it
28:33 KPIs, review cadences and cost visibility
36:24 Common anti-patterns: top-down command, founders who don't let go
41:42 Internal tooling teams as natural monopolies
45:26 The operations and security gatekeeper trap
48:20 Shifting from gatekeeper to enabler
53:02 Why developers must own production
57:34 How to set cross-divisional standards
1:07:09 Good internal platforms embed standards in golden paths
1:14:29 Entrepreneurial mindset within organisations
1:18:45 Summary and closing thoughts
Technologies Mentioned
AWS EKS - https://aws.amazon.com/eks
Apache Airflow - https://airflow.apache.org
Terraform - https://www.terraform.io
Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian dig into EU digital sovereignty: why it matters now more than ever, the legal landscape around the EU Data Act and the EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework, and the very real risk of European economies being dependent on US-controlled cloud infrastructure. They cover the contradictions between US and EU data law, the limitations of US hyperscalers setting up European entities, the current state of European cloud providers, the opportunity for EU tech to leapfrog incumbents, and what engineers can do right now to contribute to a more sovereign European digital stack.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:49 The cloud landscape: why it's all American
2:35 The conflict between US Cloud Act and EU GDPR
5:09 How the EU has responded: the Data Act explained
9:31 What the EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework actually measures
21:02 Are US hyperscaler EU entities really sovereign?
27:01 The current state of European cloud providers
30:06 The leapfrog opportunity: skipping legacy infrastructure
33:03 The geopolitical shift: trust in the US has broken
40:30 Europe's quiet power and how it fights back
44:24 What this means for the tech industry
47:13 The financial sector dependency and existential risk
51:03 What does the transition actually look like?
53:00 What engineers can do right now
Technologies Mentioned
AWS - https://aws.amazon.com
Microsoft Azure - https://azure.microsoft.com
Google Cloud - https://cloud.google.com
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian drop the technical polish and get honest about the biggest mistakes of their careers. From wiping a month of startup data with a single wrong command, to nearly electrocuting himself pulling a chassis from a live rack, to a rounding error in financial software that ended up in front of the CFO — the stories are equal parts hilarious and painful. They also cover bad search-replaces on live Cassandra clusters, taking on management too early, a wrong-direction DD command, and accidentally generating a massive AWS bill. A candid episode about how experience is often just accumulated failure.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:51 The search-replace that corrupted a Cassandra cluster
2:20 Migrating a print shop to Linux in the 90s
5:45 Data centre migration disaster: wrong rack, 3am
8:27 Wiping a month of startup code with DD in the wrong direction
10:24 Tape backups and old-school data loss
13:16 Descending into a coal mine without the tools
18:07 The accidental text that went to the boss
20:33 The kill switch that locked out a paying customer
25:07 Pushed into management too early
28:35 Not surrounding yourself with business people soon enough
38:26 The AWS bill that dwarfed the customer contract value
41:08 The rounding error that ended up in front of the CFO
45:54 The ClickHouse lesson: check managed services first
48:25 Nearly electrocuted pulling a live power supply
51:30 Airport runway lighting and the buffer overflow
1:02:30 Mission command, autonomy and lessons from other industries
1:04:45 Summary: own up fast, learn, and keep doing things
Technologies Mentioned
Cassandra - https://cassandra.apache.org
AWS - https://aws.amazon.com
ClickHouse - https://clickhouse.com
Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian are joined by Xavier Torres, a senior infrastructure and observability engineer, for a practical dive into Kubernetes. They cover what Kubernetes actually is, how pods, services, deployments and ingresses fit together, and what you genuinely need to run it in production. The conversation moves through observability tooling, GitOps with Argo CD, secrets management, service meshes, managed vs self-hosted Kubernetes, autoscaling, and whether Kubernetes is even the right tool for most companies.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction and guest welcome
1:19 Kubernetes explained: what it actually is
3:14 Pods, containers and shared namespaces
6:09 Services: the internal networking abstraction
8:02 Ingress controllers: getting traffic in
10:34 Managed Kubernetes vs self-hosted
16:03 Minimum viable observability: logs and metrics
21:41 Dealing with YAML sprawl
25:57 GitOps with Argo CD
36:09 Stateful workloads with Crossplane
40:22 When does Kubernetes become the wrong hammer?
43:02 The YAML complexity trap for developers
45:46 Service meshes: what they solve and what they cost
51:15 How much of your cluster is actually your workloads?
54:00 Alternatives: Cloud Run, Lambda, Docker Compose
1:00:03 Will Kubernetes be abstracted away by cloud providers?
1:05:51 Local development: K3s, Kind and Minikube
1:12:18 Summary: when to use Kubernetes and when not to
Technologies Mentioned
Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io
Argo CD - https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io
Helm - https://helm.sh
Crossplane - https://www.crossplane.io
Grafana - https://grafana.com
Prometheus - https://prometheus.io
AWS EKS - https://aws.amazon.com/eks
Google GKE - https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine
AWS Karpenter - https://karpenter.sh
K3s - https://k3s.io
Google Cloud Run - https://cloud.google.com/run
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian take a hands-on dive into what it actually means to run your own data centre. Drawing on years of real-world experience racking servers, pulling fibre, configuring BGP and managing colocation suites, they walk through physical layout, cooling, power redundancy, network topology, capacity planning and hidden operational costs — then contrast all of this with the cloud. A rare and genuinely technical episode for anyone curious about what happens behind the abstraction layer.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:27 Our data centre backgrounds
4:09 What does a data centre actually look like?
6:27 Tiers of availability
7:14 Racks, blades and colocation
13:06 Power redundancy: dual circuits and hot-swappable components
15:55 Network: SFPs, fibre optic and bandwidth design
18:59 BGP, ASN numbers and getting on the internet
24:13 Cooling: cold aisles and hot aisles
28:52 The cost breakdown: hardware, power, space, staffing
33:18 Capacity planning: the static nature of physical infrastructure
37:00 Team size and skills required
40:17 Hardware lifecycle and refresh cycles
44:05 How servers are ordered, received and racked
47:11 Should you run your own data centre?
50:10 Edge cases where on-prem makes sense
53:38 Hybrid cloud and AWS Outposts
57:09 Cloud vs data centre total cost of ownership
1:03:01 Environmental impact: waste heat and green data centres
1:07:24 How data centre skills transfer to the cloud
1:08:30 Summary: use the cloud if you can
Technologies Mentioned
AWS - https://aws.amazon.com
AWS Outposts - https://aws.amazon.com/outposts
Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io
Juniper Networks - https://www.juniper.net
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian dig into technical communication — one of the most underrated yet career-defining skills in engineering. They explore how to tailor your message to different audiences, why the curse of the expert derails so many technical conversations, how good documentation and code naming are themselves forms of communication, why architecture diagrams so often mislead, how to run blameless post-mortems, and why honesty and integrity are the foundations of trust in any technical discussion.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:06 What is technical communication?
2:08 Understanding your audience
5:33 The curse of the expert
7:06 How to explain Kubernetes to non-technical people
9:54 Avoiding jargon with business stakeholders
11:35 Written communication: READMEs, comments, documentation
13:54 Using AI to maintain documentation intent
15:12 Architectural Decision Records
17:37 Naming things properly: services, teams and systems
21:41 API documentation
25:56 Empathy in communication
29:34 Improving public speaking
33:57 Drawing out quieter voices in meetings
35:01 Pre-meeting async writing
38:49 Integrity and saying I don't know
43:13 Learning what the business actually does
46:00 Blameless post-mortems and RCAs done right
49:06 Architecture diagrams: right level of abstraction
53:38 Deployment vs logical architecture diagrams
55:00 Executive-first documentation: start wide, go narrow
58:17 Summary: always lead with context and work down into detail
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian take a deep dive into the world of principal engineers. Krisztian, himself a principal engineer, breaks down what the role actually involves: translating business strategy into technical direction, mentoring without micromanaging, building mental models of complex systems, and interpreting between engineering and senior leadership. They explore the difference between principal engineers and architects, the IC versus management career path, what makes a great versus a toxic principal engineer, how to interview for the role, and what aspiring engineers should focus on to get there.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:51 Where does principal engineer sit in the career ladder?
3:30 IC versus management track: the fork in the road
6:05 Why the industry created the IC path
7:06 What does a principal engineer actually do day to day?
8:27 Principal engineer versus architect
10:48 Leading by influence, not authority
12:59 Translating business goals into technical direction
16:20 Building a mental model of the whole system
18:20 Communication: 80% of the job
20:47 Teaching and knowledge sharing
22:01 Mentoring versus knowledge sharing
24:57 How to become a principal engineer
31:44 Red flags: arrogance and decision-making from authority
36:33 Avoiding the gatekeeper trap
39:46 The servant leader mindset
42:32 When to insert your authority: tiebreaking and escalation
45:00 Why principal engineers should not own production code
53:14 Skills to develop on the path to principal
56:25 The importance of breadth across industries
59:23 Spotting fake experience in interviews
1:02:00 How principal engineers are interviewed
1:06:39 Summary: what the role is really about
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian tackle the challenges of startup engineering, drawing on experience helping companies scale from nothing to tens of developers. They explore the two main startup archetypes: the bootstrapped zero-to-one prototype phase and the well-funded one-to-many scaling phase. Topics include picking the right tech stack, when to use vibe coding versus proper infrastructure, the danger of over-engineering early, unit economics, multi-account cloud environments, avoiding the trap of rebuilding your data centre in the cloud, and why unblocking other teams is always the highest-value activity.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:26 Setting the scene: two types of startup
2:07 Phase one: zero to one, get out the door fast
5:33 Defining MVP and avoiding scope creep
9:57 Zero to one vs one to many: different problems
13:42 Real startup examples: from vibe coding to Kubernetes
15:48 Security, compliance, ISO 27001, GDPR
17:58 Build vs buy
20:00 Practical tech stack for a solo founder MVP
22:56 Scaling with three developers and early funding
24:47 Unit economics: know your cost per user
28:04 Managing technical debt consciously
30:04 Use boring tech and popular languages
33:14 Organisational structure first, then tech
36:16 Standards, contracts and avoiding API chaos
40:41 Multi-account cloud strategy from day one
43:57 The real cost of blocking engineers
47:52 Unblocking other teams is always highest priority
50:03 Data architecture to avoid cross-domain dependencies
54:14 When to use consultants and fractional expertise
56:03 Summary and key takeaways
Technologies Mentioned
Replit - https://replit.com
Next.js - https://nextjs.org
Vercel - https://vercel.com
Supabase - https://supabase.com
GitHub Actions - https://github.com/features/actions
AWS EKS - https://aws.amazon.com/eks
Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian explore vibe coding — building software using AI tools and natural language rather than writing code directly. Krisztian shares hands-on experiments with Replit and Cursor, the hosts discuss the impressive speed of prototyping versus the frustration when things go wrong, and they dig into the hidden security risks of putting powerful development tools in the hands of non-technical users. The conversation also covers AI-assisted cyberattacks, supply chain vulnerabilities, and what the explosion of AI-generated apps means for the software industry.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:50 What is vibe coding?
1:47 Krisztian's experiment with Replit
3:54 Building a microservice diagramming tool with AI
6:55 Toby's experience with Lovable
10:09 Cursor vs Replit
14:00 Getting stuck in loops and losing flow state
23:16 The mainframe parallel: computing cycles and AI costs
28:42 Pricing and the race to the bottom
33:27 Why you still need developers in the loop
40:05 Supabase and Lovable integration, vendor lock-in
44:29 Security risks of vibe coding
47:28 AI-assisted cyberattacks and the arms race
59:05 Supply chain attacks and model poisoning
1:01:34 The explosion of AI slop
1:05:08 Prompt engineering and LLM manipulation
1:08:00 Summary and recommendations
Technologies Mentioned
Replit - https://replit.com
Cursor - https://www.cursor.com
Lovable - https://lovable.dev
Supabase - https://supabase.com
Claude (Anthropic) - https://www.anthropic.com
React - https://react.dev
TypeScript - https://www.typescriptlang.org
GitHub Copilot - https://github.com/features/copilot
OpenRouter - https://openrouter.ai
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian tackle one of the most common questions in tech: how do you actually get into the industry in 2025? They cover choosing your first programming language, T-shaped career development, what hiring managers look for in juniors, the impact of AI on junior roles, how to navigate introversion in a collaborative industry, the value of changing companies to broaden perspective, and why your reputation starts mattering from day one. A practical and honest guide for anyone starting out or looking to level up.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:23 Would you start in tech today?
2:32 Find your motivation first
3:23 How to start learning: courses, books, boot camps
5:57 Pick one language and go deep
8:31 What a junior is actually expected to know
10:21 How AI has changed the junior market
13:54 AI as a tool vs AI as a crutch
17:40 Getting into infrastructure and cloud
21:50 The T-shaped engineer
24:11 What hiring managers look for
31:57 What to do in your first interview
33:17 Communication: the neglected superpower
40:11 How to help juniors grow
44:25 Imposter syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger curve
49:09 Understanding the business from day one
51:30 Managing introversion in a collaborative environment
55:58 Career progression: junior to senior to staff
1:03:49 Individual contributor vs management
1:07:22 When to switch companies
1:12:50 Protecting your reputation from day one
1:15:03 Make yourself redundant, not indispensable
1:22:37 Remote work challenges for juniors
Technologies Mentioned
Python - https://www.python.org
JavaScript - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript
TypeScript - https://www.typescriptlang.org
Linux - https://www.kernel.org
Terraform - https://www.terraform.io
AWS - https://aws.amazon.com
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In this episode, Toby and Krisztian dig into one of software engineering's most debated topics: monoliths versus microservices. They break down what each architecture actually means, where the industry went wrong by treating microservices as a default, and when a well-structured monolith is the smarter choice. The conversation covers real-world scaling challenges, infrastructure complexity, team organisation, Kubernetes fatigue, and the hidden costs of over-engineering early-stage products.
https://techleaguepodcast.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:40 What is a monolith?
2:31 What are microservices?
3:50 The case for monoliths
7:46 Scaling problems with monoliths
8:17 Running a monolith like a microservice
14:00 The infrastructure cost of microservices
19:15 Pros and cons of microservices
22:03 Infrastructure as code and service ownership
24:00 Architectural mistakes and migration pain
28:41 Technology diversity: freedom or fragmentation?
33:25 The danger of nano-services
35:21 When should you use a monolith?
39:39 When should you use microservices?
42:44 ECS Fargate vs Kubernetes
43:01 The history of container orchestration
51:06 Is the complexity worth it?
58:13 Conclusions and takeaways
1:01:36 How to build a monolith you can grow out of
Technologies Mentioned
Docker - https://www.docker.com
Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io
Amazon ECS - https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/
AWS Fargate - https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/
AWS Lambda - https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/
Terraform - https://www.terraform.io
Apache Mesos - https://mesos.apache.org
Google Cloud Run - https://cloud.google.com/run
Helm - https://helm.sh
