alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders

Latest Episodes:

#38 - Sagnik Nandy // CTO Okta Nov 11, 2021

Show notes

Identity Management, User Rearch, and Building Scalable Products

I spoke with Sagnik Nandy, CTO & President of Technology at Okta, the market leading IAM Solution 🔐. Discover deep insight into the world of identity management🆔, user feedback 👥, and why the best products provide a simplified interface to a complex solution (with customizability ⚙️ for advanced users). Don’t miss out on this opportunity to hear how to build scalable products ♾️ from someone who scaled and led Google Analytics 📊 and Google Ad 💸 products/

Listen to find out:

Why you need to build for both expansion 📈 and deprecation 📉
The need for a passwordless future 🔏
The challenges of integrations ☮️ (Okta integrates with 7000+ services)
How to Scale Excellence 👍
the importance of mentorship 🧑‍🏫

Listen here:

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Bechtle and Storyblok

Bechtle Looking for an IT solution for your SMB?

Save time by trusting Bechtle with all your IT needs.

From IT consultancy to procurement and implementation. B2Bs have trusted Bechtle with their IT needs for the past 30 years.

SMBs and self-employed individuals now also enjoy the Bechtle experience by conveniently buying all their IT needs online. Bechle is not only the largest IT company in Germany, they are also located in 14 countries across Europe. They offer online shopping with great prices and fast delivery.

Get €10 off your first order with coupon code alphalist Bechtle Storyblok Finally, a headless CMS that works for both developers and business users.

Storyblok offers a combination of visual editing tools and highly customizable content blocks. This is built on a modern headless architecture that gives developers the flexibility to build fast and reliable digital platforms.

The big benefit of headless CMS is that content can be streamed to any platform via API without having to manage the content multiple times. For example, customers use Storyblok for their websites, online stores, apps, or send the same content to Twitter, WeChat or Alexa skills.

Find out why Storyblok is used by over 50,000 developers, product owners and managers in over 80,000 projects in 130 countries. Customers include Adidas, Marley Spoon, Deliveroo and more. Storyblok

#37 - Fabian Wesner // Founder ROQ Oct 29, 2021

Show notes

What it takes to build a FaaS; a multinational, cross-industry shop system and which languages for a webapp)

I spoke with Fabian Wesner, Founder at ROQ, a FaaS (Feature-as-a-Service) for web applications. Learn deep insight into the world of web applications and frameworks from someone who had to launch an eCommerce shop each week (in different countries 🇧🇷 🇦🇺 🇯🇵 and industries!👗🛏️🧸). Fabian, as former Rocket Internet CTO and Spryker Co-Founder and CTO is the hidden gem of the German CTO scene.

Listen to find out:

How working in the “Samwer sweatshop” felt
Node vs Ruby vs PHP for a modern web app
Why “keeping your stack lean” is important and how he approaches architecture
What it takes to build a eCommerce shop system 🛒 (he built 3!)
The science 🧬 behind building a new FaaS (Feature-as-a-Service)
Tips into the 👁️ Lost Art of Database Schema Visualisation

Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/37-fabian-wesner-founder-roq

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: **Sastrify ** and Bechtle

Sastrify Sastrify helps companies to optimize the cost of software procurement by negotiating with suppliers of each software.

They saved OMR around €20.000 a year. A lot for a company of 150 people using tools like GSuite, Adobe Creative Cloud, NewRelic and more.

It is a simple and hassle-free process.

They promise to save more money than they cost. And as an alphalist.CTO podcast listener, you get a 50% discount for the first 3 months!

So give them a try. Sastrify

Bechtle Looking for an IT solution for your SMB?

Save time by trusting Bechtle with all your IT needs.

From IT consultancy to procurement and implementation. B2Bs have trusted Bechtle with their IT needs for the past 30 years.

Get €10 off your first order with coupon code alphalist Bechtle

#36 - Kore Nordmann // CTO Frontastic Oct 22, 2021

Show notes

Complexity of eCommerce Web Apps in 2021

I spoke with Kore Nordemann, CTO at Frontastic, a Frontend-as-a-Service for headless CMS and commerce systems. Learn deep insight into what it takes to build a web app today: from choosing a stack to hiring frontend/backend/full-stack developers.

Listen to find out:

Which ECommerce 🛒 features are Amazon’s Achilles Heel
Why Pair Programming 🧑‍ 💻‍🧑 works better than Pull Request Reviews
The pros and cons of Stateful/Stateless, Docker, PHP, CouchDB 🛋️ and more
Why microservices are probably not for you (yet integrated services are).
Plus the design features 🗺️ of the Frontastic Virtual Office that you might want to implement for your remote office.

Listen here:

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Dell and Okta*

Dell Dell Technologies offer IT-Technology solutions for companies of any size, tailored to their needs. The experts that guide you are equipped with both the know-how and a huge product portfolio of possible. Their end-to-end IT Solutions range from laptops, PCs and workstations to server, storage, cloud and IoT solutions.

Dell

Okta Facing identity management challenges as you digitize?

Okta offers THE market-leading solution to help you make identity & access management work as a service.

Okta Customer Identity Management is a platform that offers endless ways to connect with your employees and customers.Get support for your most important customer-facing initiatives: Integrate identity & access into every app and create secure and engaging experiences in no time by outsourcing workforce or customer identity management to Okta.

Get started in 15 minutes and test IAM or CIAM as a service. Create a frictionless registration and login experience for your applications and make identity the foundation for your Zero Trust strategy and enable access for all users—regardless of their location, device, or network.

okta

#35 - Alesia Braga // CTO SmartRecruiters Sep 23, 2021

Show notes

How to save time and increase diversity in tech recruiting

I spoke with Alesia Braga, CTO at SmartRecruiters, an end-to-end recruiting solution. She shares with us insights into the recruiting world, how to improve diversity and what she does to shorten the recruiting cycle time to avoid losing top candidates She also shares with us:

Why she uses a literal scorecard 💯 for each candidate she interviews
How she juggles 🤹 product and tech in the CTO role
The challenges of balancing enterprise use 🏭 with superior end user experience

Hear Online or read the related blog post about Recruiting Tips to Increase Diversity while Saving Time

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Okta and Dell*

Okta Facing identity management challenges as you digitize?

Okta offers THE market-leading solution to help you make identity & access management work as a service.

okta

Dell

#34 - Mark Porter // CTO MongoDB Sep 09, 2021

Show notes

Building an internal culture, Running a product rooted in the Open Source and more

I spoke with Mark Porter, CTO at MongoDB. His 40 year career spans time working at companies like Oracle, AWS and Grab. He shares with us insights into technical leadership, company culture and the open-source world, Listen to find out Where DEI initiatives fail〽️ Why they don’t use OKRs 📏 at MongoDB How to Build a Product around the Open Source 👥 +How being a parent makes him a better manager

Listen here or read related blog post about how to build an internal culture. BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Fastly and Okta

Fastly This episode is again kindly supported by Fastly, the biggest challenger in the CDN market and a solution I personally use. Fastly is pushing ahead the technical boundaries and is from my personal perspective the best solution on the market. Fastly is one of the key drivers of the "edge cloud trend".

Well-known customers of Fastly are Shopify, The New York Times, Reddit, Github and many many more.

If you want to try it all with first class support, just go to fastly.com/alphalist

Okta This episode is kindly sponsored by Okta Customer Identity Management.

If you're transforming into a digital platform and facing identity management challenges, listen closely now, because Okta offers THE market-leading solutions to help you make identity & access management work as a service.

A platform that offers endless ways to connect with your employees and customers.Get support for your most important customer-facing initiatives: Integrate identity & access into every app and create secure and engaging experiences in no time by outsourcing workforce or customer identity management to Okta.

okta

#33 - Andreas Schranzhofer // CTO Scalable Capital Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

How to Secure your App

I spoke with Andreas Schranzhofer, CTO of Scalable Capital about the best ways to secure an app. Scalable Capital is a Neo-Broker and robo-advisor based in Munich with over 250 million in funding.
Learn about app security from someone highly experienced in running an app in the highly regulated FinTech 💰 industry.

Learn:

Why you need both security and obfuscation 🛡️
How to prevent Supply Chain and Ransomware attacks 🦹‍🤑
What external tools he uses in the Software Development Cycle 🛠️

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Okta and Fastly

Okta This episode is kindly sponsored by Okta Customer Identity Management.

okta

Well-known customers of Fastly are Shopify, The New York Times, Reddit, Github and many many more.

If you want to try it all with first class support, just go to fastly.com/alphalist

#32 - Charity Majors // CTO HoneyComb Aug 12, 2021

Show notes

Testing in Production, Getting Rid of Hierarchy and other Thoughts on Socio-Technical Leadership

I spoke with Charity Majors, CTO of HoneyComb, prolific Twitter user, and blogger. WHO TESTS IN PRODUCTION. 😱 And is proud of it. She also shares her insight into socio-technical leadership, observability, and databases.
Learn:

The importance of a tight feedback loop 🔁
Why the maximum deploy time should be 15 minutes. 🕒🚀
How microservices make engineers jobs harder😓
Why she wants to do away with hierarchies to increase job satisfaction 😀

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Fastly and Okta

Well-known customers of Fastly are Shopify, The New York Times, Reddit, Github and many many more.

If you want to try it all with first class support, just go to fastly.com/alphalist

Okta This episode is kindly sponsored by Okta Customer Identity Management.

[okta ](https://www.okta.com/free-trial/customer-identity/

#31 - Alex Solomon // CTO PagerDuty Jul 29, 2021

Show notes

AIOps and the Future of DevOps

‘PagerDuty raises 90 million to wake up more engineers in the middle of the night.’ read a recent headline. Highlighting both the recent funding and also its unpopular but necessary job. However, Alex Solomon of PagerDuty is working on making the DevOps world more efficient with on-call-management, AIOps, and automating routine debugging tasks. He shares with us about:

On-Call Management: The only notifications 🔔 that provide a better Work/Life Balance
How AIOps and Runbook Automation 🤖are the future of DevOps (+other trends)
Partner vs Compete: Why they became an ecosystem
How he grew his B2B Saas Startup 🚀

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

Dell

This episode is proudly presented by Dell Technologies. Dell has a team of experts that helps you solve all of your IT-related challenges and IT needs in your daily business. They also are available to guide you in choosing the right end-to-end IT-solutions or products. They offer IT-technology solutions for companies of any size, tailored to their needs and have a huge product portfolio with it-solutions and know-how.

They can help CTOs through providing end2end it solutions… be it laptops, pcs, workstations or server, storage, cloud, IoT solutions or financing If you want to know more, please check the show notes to get a link.

Dell and Fastly

Well-known customers of Fastly are Shopify, The New York Times, Reddit, Github and many many more.

If you want to try it all with first class support, just go to fastly.com/alphalist

#30 - Cheryl Hung //VP Ecosystem of CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation] Jul 15, 2021

Show notes

Cloud Native Technologies: Edge Computing, Kubernetes, Containers and Open Source

We spoke with Cheryl Hung of Cloud Native. She runs the ecosystem of over 600 members contributing to over a hundred open source projects. She also started the Cloud Native London meetup where she promotes developer advocacy and diversity. As an early adopter of kubernetes, she has a lot to share! Cheryl shared with us:

The importance of Developer Advocacy 👩‍💻
How Edge Computing is the next frontier in Cloud Native ☁️
Why kubernetes is not for everyone 📦and has to become easier
Why End-User companies should contribute to the Open Source 🆓
Her childhood dream of becoming a Google Engineer and where she is holding with it!

Listen here: https://alphalist.podigee.io/30-cheryl-hung-cloud-native-computing-foundation

Join us in welcoming our First Female Guest.. and send us more because we are missing out!

Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1512227295 || Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/08QvFNH32V1yRiwfNQhTYx || Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/show/1202312

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Fastly and Dell

Well-known customers of Fastly are Shopify, The New York Times, Reddit, Github and many many more.

If you want to try it all with first class support, just go to fastly.com/alphalist

Dell

#29 - Matthias Jugel // Co-Founder of UBIRCH Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

EU vaccination passes and other uses of crypto and blockchain for verification

We spoke to Matthias Jugel, the co-founder of ubirch, the company behind the 🇩🇪 German digital vaccination passes 💉His technology has generated over 30 million vaccine passes giving Germans their summer holidays back! And they launched in a matter of weeks! We discussed

What was involved in creating digital vaccine passports that worked OFFLINE and allow movement around the EU 🇪🇺
Blockchain verification ✔️ and its applications in pharmaceuticals⚕️, car insurance 🚘 and manufacturing 🏭
what he learnt from launching a national program in less than a month! 📆

Listen on Apple: || Spotify: || Deezer

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Sastrify and Fastly

Sastrify Thanks a lot to my friends at Sastrify for sponsoring this episode. A lot of CTOs I know are responsible for procurement of software as a service tools by accident and never have the time and energy to work on optimizing their costs. For example: at my company OMR, we have a lot of tools… Gsuite, Adobe creative cloud, Newrelic and many more. Sastrify helps companies like ours to optimize those costs & negotiate with suppliers of such software. In our case they helped us to save around 20.000€ per year, which is a lot if you look at our company size of around 150 people. It is a simple and hassle-free process we went through and I can just recommend anyone listening to do the same. They actually promise to save more money than they cost.

They are already working with a lot of alphalist members such as Runstatic, Westwing and Emma.

They are giving a 50% discount for the first 3 months to all podcast listeners so go to www.sastrify.com/alphalist to get started today

Well-known customers of Fastly are Shopify, The New York Times, Reddit, Github and many many more.

If you want to try it all with first class support, just go to fastly.com/alphalist

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