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Steve Yegge is known for his writing and “rants”, including the famous “Google Platforms Rant” and the evergreen “Get that job at Google” post. He spent 7 years at Amazon and 13 at Google, as well as some time at Grab before briefly retiring from tech. Now out of retirement, he’s building AI developer tools at Sourcegraph—drawn back by the excitement of working with LLMs. He’s currently writing the book Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond.
In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I sat down with Steve in Seattle to talk about why Google consistently failed at building platforms, why AI coding feels easy but is hard to master, and why a new role, the AI Fixer, is emerging. We also dig into why he’s so energized by today’s AI tools, and how they’re changing the way software gets built.
We also discuss:
• The “interview anti-loop” at Google and the problems with interviews
• An inside look at how Amazon operated in the early days before microservices
• What Steve liked about working at Grab
• Reflecting on the Google platforms rant and why Steve thinks Google is still terrible at building platforms
• Why Steve came out of retirement
• The emerging role of the “AI Fixer” in engineering teams
• How AI-assisted coding is deceptively simple, but extremely difficult to steer
• Steve’s advice for using AI coding tools and overcoming common challenges
• Predictions about the future of developer productivity
• A case for AI creating a real meritocracy
• And much more!
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Timestamps
(00:00) Intro
(04:55) An explanation of the interview anti-loop at Google and the shortcomings of interviews
(07:44) Work trials and why entry-level jobs aren’t posted for big tech companies
(09:50) An overview of the difficult process of landing a job as a software engineer
(15:48) Steve’s thoughts on Grab and why he loved it
(20:22) Insights from the Google platforms rant that was picked up by TechCrunch
(27:44) The impact of the Google platforms rant
(29:40) What Steve discovered about print ads not working for Google
(31:48) What went wrong with Google+ and Wave
(35:04) How Amazon has changed and what Google is doing wrong
(42:50) Why Steve came out of retirement
(45:16) Insights from “the death of the junior developer” and the impact of AI
(53:20) The new role Steve predicts will emerge
(54:52) Changing business cycles
(56:08) Steve’s new book about vibe coding and Gergely’s experience
(59:24) Reasons people struggle with AI tools
(1:02:36) What will developer productivity look like in the future
(1:05:10) The cost of using coding agents
(1:07:08) Steve’s advice for vibe coding
(1:09:42) How Steve used AI tools to work on his game Wyvern
(1:15:00) Why Steve thinks there will actually be more jobs for developers
(1:18:29) A comparison between game engines and AI tools
(1:21:13) Why you need to learn AI now
(1:30:08) Rapid fire round
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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:
• The full circle of developer productivity with Steve Yegge
• Inside Amazon’s engineering culture
• Vibe coding as a software engineer
• AI engineering in the real world
• Inside Sourcegraph’s engineering culture—
See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast
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