Enterprise tech talk with useful detours.
Software Defined Interviews pairs enterprise software talk with loose, funny preambles about phones, art degrees, old tech jobs, and stage nerves. The conversations settle into practical questions about how teams build, ship, govern, and survive modern software systems.
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Software Defined Interviews is a long-running technology conversation show about enterprise software, platform engineering, DevOps, open source, and the culture around technical work. It does not treat software as only architecture diagrams and release pipelines. It keeps circling back to people, incentives, teams, habits, and the strange organizational weather that determines what actually ships. The pacing is casual. A discussion may start with Apple design complaints, art school, philosophy degrees, conference nerves, 7-Eleven pizza, or the social meaning of green chat bubbles. Then it slides into the serious material. Recent episodes cover Kubernetes contribution structures, Sun Microsystems, Postgres, progressive delivery, DORA research, AI adoption, startups, open source strategy, stand-up comedy, and career management. The guests are allowed to stretch. That gives the show space for practical nuance rather than polished slogans. A conversation about AI does not stop at faster pull requests; it asks what happens to user focus, working hours, trust, and organizational learning. A conversation about DevOps does not stop at tools; it gets into autonomy, alignment, automation, blamelessness, and why transformation programs so often disappoint. A conversation about Conway's law becomes a question about comfort, team identity, and why familiar problems persist. The show has a dry, lightly skeptical sense of humor. It enjoys puncturing tech mythology, especially heroic developer stories and executive abstractions that sound cleaner than real work. Still, the point is not cynicism. The better episodes are grounded in useful experience from people who have spent time inside communities, companies, migrations, and technical organizations. Software Defined Interviews is best for listeners who already know the broad vocabulary of modern software delivery and want smarter, messier conversations around it. It feels less like a keynote and more like the hallway after the keynote, when the interesting part finally starts.
Made for: For platform engineers, DevOps practitioners, software leaders, open source people, and enterprise tech watchers who prefer candid conversation over polished vendor language.
What sets it apart: The show mixes serious infrastructure and software delivery questions with loose, often funny setup conversations. Its edge comes from letting guests connect technical systems to organizational behavior, career history, and everyday workplace incentives.
Deep discussions about technology, enterprise IT, and the like
An iPhone update leads to deployment guardrails; Kote and Whitney Lee make your tech gripes productive.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A career-origin story opens into a grounded look at open source work and organizational friction.
Degrees in fine art photography and philosophy serve as a relaxed way into a wider discussion of how technical careers form, before Josh Berkus moves into his years at Sun and the habits that shaped work inside the company.
A grounded look at making progressive delivery incremental, observable, and sized for real teams.
Progressive delivery is treated here as a practical operating habit, with Heidi tying deployment choices to the conditions teams need when they are working near their guardrails but still want control.
A live conversation about AI agents, human agency, and why video evidence is getting harder to trust.
A live recording from Configuration Management Camp shapes a loose conversation with Andrew Clay Schaefer into a focused look at AI agents and human judgment.
AI can speed up delivery, but teams still have to decide whether that time serves users.
Software Defined Interviews frames faster AI-assisted development around a better question: what should teams do with the time they get back? The hopeful answer is practical rather than grand.
A funny, thoughtful conversation about public performance, Conway's law, and the pull of familiar teams.
The episode settles on a question that is easy to recognize: how people get comfortable being seen at work. Kote's conference talks and keynotes open into a loose discussion of being asked to speak, not always knowing why the invitation arrived, and whether experience outside…
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
The engineering decisions behind code, agents, and control.
Python tools, practical trade-offs, and the occasional programming joke.
Matt Stratton interviews DevOps practitioners on security, platform engineering, and trusting AI-written code.
Josh Berkus, a Red Hat contributor to Kubernetes in Portland, Oregon, ties a fine-art degree in sculpture to nearly 29 years in open source work.
Heidi Waterhouse argues that Apple’s “liquid glass” UI change, Facebook’s rage-bait economics, and Uber Eats notifications all point to the same problem: software treats user consent as optional.
Live from Configuration Management Camp 2026, Software Defined Interviews brings Andrew Clay Schaefer into a long conversation about adoption, organizational pressure, and why people actually choose tools.
Nathan Harvey says DORA’s 2025 report is now titled “the State of AI-Assisted Software Development,” and he frames the shift as a move beyond DevOps as the main label.
Leanne Li describes leaving software engineering and developer relations after burnout, then trying amateur musical theater, stand-up comedy, and improv in Amsterdam.
Sarah Christoff discusses her experience moving from big companies to startups and the process of building and funding open source tech.
Robert Reeves discusses how growing up in Austin and being surrounded by computers led to his early involvement in tech and a startup in 1995.
Richard Seroter discusses the concept of the 10x developer, its negative connotations, and the importance of skill and mindset in tech careers.
Kota and Rachel discuss the role of industry analysts, the balance between data and opinion, and the ethical challenges of vendor relationships.
Pablo Santos, founder of Kodi Software, discusses his company's version control system Plastic SCM and his personal interest in motorcycles.