ctrl-alt-expletive

By: Mark McCracken & Michael McCarthy
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  • Summary

  • Join us for a laid back catch up on what's going on in the world of software, enterprise business, news for software and tech, and miscellaneous bureaucracy.
    © 2025 Cracksoft
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Economics Management Management & Leadership Politics & Government
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Episodes
  • Episode 12: Engineering Management with Director of Engineering Sam Jones

    Episode 12: Engineering Management with Director of Engineering Sam Jones
    Feb 24 2025
    We've got Director of Engineering Sam Jones talking all things Engineering Management. How to get into it, how she stays organised, great books to learn from, and how she approaches the challenges of the job. Michael prepares for putting together an event on developer experience Sam helps merge 2 companies together RIP duolingo bird Who is Sam Jones (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammiej/)? loosely... Frontend Dev -> Team Lead @ gamesys ---> Eng. Manager @ Monzo -----> Director of Eng. @ Benifex Quickfire Questions One to ones, all in one day or evenly spread throughout the week? Best new joiner swag you’ve ever had? Scrum or Kanban? Longest probation period you’ve ever heard of? Ever failed someone’s probation? Ever failed probation yourself? Interviewing off camera – yay or nay? Best team building activity? Slack or Teams? Breaking Prod The near miss that could've topped our leaderboard, working on trading systems Big Topic How do you get into it? What does training look like, for an engineering manager? Skip levels – do you do these? How often? Best way you’ve improved your abilities as an engineering manager? The danger zone! What it is and how to work through it? Is AI coming for your job? How do you see signs of burnout in people you’re managing? What are your KPIs as an engineering manager? Stack ranking employees – necessary evil? How do you make the jump from managing engineers, to managing managers? ## News 1. Alphabet drops a longstanding ban on AI being used for developing weapons (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy081nqx2zjo) (BBC) 1. ELON MUSK act (https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/05/the-elon-musk-act-aims-to-ban-special-government-employees-from-having-federal-contracts/) (TechCrunch). The proposed bill is called the ELON MUSK Act, which stands for “Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy” 1. Asahi Linux Hector Martin project leads resigns – maintainer burnout (https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/13/ashai_linux_head_quits) (The Register) 1. Apple Lamp - Expressive and Functional Movement Design for Non-Anthropomorphic Robot research paper (https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/elegnt-expressive-functional-movement) (Apple) 1. Hauwei release tri-folding phone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv_S7KrOlfk) (Youtube - Marques Brownlee) Recommendations Engineering Management Books Resilient Management, Lara Hogan (https://resilient-management.com) Management 3.0 (https://management30.com/books/management30/) The Manager's Path, Camille Fournier (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/) (O'Reilly) An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management, Will Larson (https://press.stripe.com/an-elegant-puzzle) (Stripe Press) Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50363684-become-an-effective-software-engineering-manager) (Good Reads) Managing Humans: Biting and Humourous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, Michael Lopp (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4302-4315-1?gtmf=s) Scaling People, Claire Hughes Johnson (https://press.stripe.com/scaling-people) (Stripe Press) Non Engineering Management Books The Staff Engineer's Path (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-staff-engineers/9781098118723/) (O'Reilly) Platform Engineering, Camille Fournier (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/platform-engineering/9781098153632/) (O'Reilly) Music I Love You, Honeybear - Father John Misty (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/i-love-you-honeybear/931563362) (Apple Music). Royal Albert Hall Event (https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/events/2025/father-john-misty) Movies Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32063050/) (IMDb) Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2049403/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_5_nm_2_in_0_q_beetlejuice) (IMDb) Miscellaneous Canada vs. USA ice hockey match, 3 fights in first 9 seconds of play (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUa6c7DNmQY) (YouTube) Next Time Rax talks about Scaled Agile frameworks Listen to the end to hear this episodes bloopers! If you've enjoyed the show, please recommend us to someone else who would like it, leave us a rating/review, or give us some feedback. Give us your feedback about the podcast (https://www.ctrl-alt-expletive.com/feedback) Special Guest: Sam Jones.
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • Episode 11: Tech for Good: Games for Kids in Hospital with creative director Nikki Stearman

    Episode 11: Tech for Good: Games for Kids in Hospital with creative director Nikki Stearman
    Feb 21 2025
    We've got BAFTA winning Creative Director Nikki Stearman, talking about tech for good. She shares her experience designing and crafting experiences for children who are about to go to hospital, to help them understand what the environment and procedure will be like. Michael's office refurb continues, as he trades signed music memorabilia for music speakers The great rebrand is in the works Lenny steals a lunch Nikki shows off her BAFTA Quickfire Questions Mac or PC? Greatest gaming console ever? Greatest game ever? Most addictive game on your phone? Yorkshire or East Anglia? Morris Ring, Morris Foundation, or Open Morris? Spend a day doing Freelance work, or a day doing your permanent job? Do you version control your code? Is big tech fundamentally evil? Death of Flash – sad or not sad? Breaking prod? Well that won't earn you a BAFTA! Nikki does her homework. Big Topic: Tech for good, making games for kids Tech for good – conscious choice or something you walked in to? Do you worry about screen time? Would you / have you ever taken a role you feel morally ambiguous about? How close do you get to the end user of your product? What’s a kid’s first interaction like with the games your company makes? Does it show demonstrable results in treatment? Do you make any games in your spare time? Research from Dylan Yamada-Rice on Exploring Children's attitides towards notions fo the digital good through hybrid arts (https://digitalgood.net/dg-research/exploring-childrens-attitudes-towards-notions-of-the-digital-good-through-hybrid-arts-practice/) News Are noise cancelling headphones causing health problems? (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgkjvr7x5x6o) Children’s views on AI will form the manifesto for world leaders (https://www.turing.ac.uk/news/childrens-views-ai-will-form-manifesto-world-leaders?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=Text_link&utm_campaign=Turing-News_childrens-views-ai-will-form-manifesto-world-leaders) AI to help us understand animal’s emotions (https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/16/researchers-are-training-ai-to-interpret-animal-emotions/?utm_source=pocket_shared) Sri Lankan grid taken out by monkeys (https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/10/sri_lanka_monkey_blackout?utm_source=pocket_shared) Recommendations Music This is Classic Club (https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/this-is-classic-club/pl.de3d438ba0724b3a8f309f333d9095b2) playlist, dance anthems (apple music) I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Fear is on our Side (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/fear-is-on-our-side/447611770) album, Alternative (apple music) Saafi Brothers - Mystic Cigarettes (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/mystic-cigarettes/279131194) album, electronic (apple music) Podcasts Cloud Dialogues (https://www.cloud-dialogues.com) podcast from our guest on episode 7, Georgia Smith Books The Power of Bad and How to Overcome it (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/192339/the-power-of-bad-by-tierney-roy-f-baumeister-and-john/9780141975801) TV Am I being unreasonable? (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001c3f7/am-i-being-unreasonable-series-1-episode-1?seriesId=m001c3f9-structural-1-m001c3f8) (BBC iPlayer) If you've enjoyed the show, please recommend us to someone else who would like it, leave us a rating/review, or give us some feedback. Give us your feedback about the podcast (https://www.ctrl-alt-expletive.com/feedback) Special Guest: Nikki Stearman.
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Episode 10: Career Changes and Coding Bootcamps, with Chris Hunter

    Episode 10: Career Changes and Coding Bootcamps, with Chris Hunter
    Feb 8 2025
    Michael keeps up with his "listen to 100 albums in a year" resolution. Mark has a weights rack of shame. Chris fails dry Jan by a matter of days. There's a 1% chance we'll all be mush anyway. GIVE US FEEDBACK! Do this form, it will take 4 mins (https://forms.office.com/e/gQJFBRJJAY) Chris Hunter Working in government on a project with other consultancies also contributing. Are they in competition? Lovely personal github readme (https://github.com/chriswhunter89) Quickfire Questions Hurling, GAA, or other? Most used terminal command at the moment? Dev or Ops, pick one for the rest of you life. Dream Industry to work in? Least enjoyable technologies you've worked with? Michael's weirdest habbit? How scared are you AI will take your job? What's your "getting down to write code" music? Breaking Prod Clean sheet, but has seen a team unable to deploy to prod for over a month! Big Topics Changing Careers You’ve had a big career change. * What made you decide you wanted to change careers? * Were you frustrated with the day-to-day job, or environment? Lack of variation? Lack of opportunities? * Presumably you were on at least alright money, was it worrying taking a pay cut? * Did you have to build a financial buffer to finance the change? * Do you wish you had done it sooner? Or timed it right? * How did you go about skilling up? Coding Bootcamp, at Le Wagon (https://www.lewagon.com/london) All in person, or online? What sort of topics did you cover? Anything you loved or hated? You had a few months gap after the coding bootcamp, before your job. Was that nerve wracking? To think you’d spent a few months of time/money, and not yet got a job? Were you already warmed up to the idea that finding work might just take a while? Did you get guidance on how to go about getting a job? Has the content you learned then all been useful? Any cruft? How is the pay now, relative to your previous role? Was it a great investment? Any advice for anyone considering a career change into tech? News AI sensors used in homes of vulnerable people (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp827ekneg4o) Ontario responds to Trump tariff by pitching Starlink deal into the trash (https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/ontario_canada_responds_to_trump_tariff/) EU's AltStore Gets First Native iOS Pornography App (https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/03/eu-altstore-porn-app/) Irish AI minister has never used ChatGPT (https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/04/irish_ai_minister) Australia bans DeepSeek on government devices (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8d95v0nr1yo) Abandoned S3 buckets and the potential to do harm on a SolarWinds+ scale (https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/04/abandoned_aws_s3/?td=rt-3a) Elon Musk lies about gaming ability (https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/elon-musk-video-games-scandal-path-of-exile-asmongold-quin/) Recommendations Music The Long Forever, Elephant Tree & Lowrider (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/the-long-forever/1775636079) Studio Ghibli, Anime Music (https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/joe-hisaishi-studio-ghibli-works-essentials/pl.9d00cd92b13746c096dd552d24a46a3b) Podcast Search Engine: The New Zuckerberg (https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/the-new-zuckerberg) Movies Dune 2 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15239678/) The Brutalist (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8999762/) GIVE US FEEDBACK! Do this form, it will take 4 mins (https://forms.office.com/e/gQJFBRJJAY) Special Guest: Chris Hunter.
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    1 hr and 27 mins

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