💥 Issue 95

AI: data vs hype, José Valim on coding with AI, Scaling to 100+ as a Director, What is Functional Programming, Your career isn’t stuck

Feb 25, 2026

Your AI demo works. Now what? (Sponsored)

Most teams have a proof-of-concept. Fewer have AI running reliably in production. If your team is stuck in that gap, you’re not alone.

QCon AI Boston (June 1-2) brings together senior engineers and tech leaders who’ve already made that shift. Two days of real patterns, real failures, and what actually worked. No hidden product pitches. Just practitioners helping practitioners.

See the early speakers

Happy Wednesday 👋 and a warm welcome to Tech Talks Weekly #95!

This issue includes over 127 new conference talks published in the past week together with 62 new podcasts. That sounds like a lot, so make sure to check out both 🏆 Featured this week as well as 📈 Most-watched talks to find the ones you don’t want to miss.

Get ready and let’s jump right in!

🏆 Featured this week

Here are our top recommendations this week. Watch now or bookmark!

“Data vs Hype: How Orgs Actually Win with AI - The Pragmatic Summit” from The Pragmatic Summit 2026
Conference ⸱ +8k views ⸱ Feb 24, 2026 ⸱ 00h 29m 49s
tldw: This keynote presents fresh data (Dec 25/Jan 26) on how AI is used by developers that’s never been published before. It argues most companies are rushing to use AI 2026, but that high usage numbers often hide low real change in throughput and quality. It warns benchmarks and averages can mislead and points to early signals from tools like Codex and a few case studies where teams saw measurable gains only after changing how they work, not just what AI tool use. The takeaway is that AI does not fix broken engineering on its own and can lead to even more incidents (even 2x!). The teams that win focus on a small set of concrete practices and track outcomes with better data. I highly recommend this talk.
“Your career isn’t stuck – you’re playing by the wrong rules | Limor Bergman Gross | LeadDev Berlin” from LeadDev Berlin 2025
Conference ⸱ +500 views ⸱ Feb 19, 2026 ⸱ 00h 25m 45s
tldw: Many engineers feel stuck because they follow the usual career script: work hard, keep your head down, wait to be noticed. This talk says promotions often go to people who build visibility and trust, not just output. The framework is simple: pick a problem that matters to your organization, make your work easy to see, share progress in public places like docs and planning meetings and build allies across teams. It also suggests asking for scope, ownership and decision rights.
“Coding Agents & Language Evolution: Navigating Uncharted Waters • José Valim • GOTO 2025” from GOTO Copenhagen 2025
Conference ⸱ +2k views ⸱ Feb 18, 2026 ⸱ 00h 37m 56s
tldw: Coding agents are getting good at writing code but they still fail in predictable ways because we do not give them clear instructions, safe tools, or enough runtime context. The talk frames agent work as three parts: instructions, tools and runtime, then shows how to make each less fragile. For instructions, it argues for a repo level contract like AGENTS.md that tells an agent how to run tests, format code, follow project conventions and what it must not touch. For tools, it pushes simple, explicit capabilities over magic, so agents can call well scoped commands and APIs instead of free form shell spelunking. For runtime, it makes the case that languages and frameworks should expose better introspection and integrated runtimes so agents can ask the system what is running, what failed, and how to reproduce it, not just guess from logs. The takeaway is that better agent results come from better interfaces and feedback loops in our tooling, not from bigger prompts.
“Scaling to 100+ as a Director: Lessons from Growing Engineering Organizations” from InfoQ Dev Summit 2025
Conference ⸱ +400 views ⸱ Feb 19, 2026 ⸱ 00h 51m 09s
tldw: This talk presents learnings from scaling orgs from ~30 to 100+ engineers across big tech and fintech. Past ~50, you need a real leadership team and steady operating cadence to keep execution from turning into chaos. Reorgs should be expected and rehearsed, not treated like failures. To avoid slow consensus, use lightweight decision tools like DACI and write down decisions in management decision records.
“GeeCON 2025: Adam Warski - What is Functional Programming?” from GeeCON 2025
Conference ⸱ <100 views ⸱ Feb 23, 2026 ⸱ 00h 52m 58s
tldw: Functional programming is everywhere in modern languages but people still can’t agree on what it even means. This talk tries to pin down a workable definition by looking at which language features actually enable functional style and which ones get in the way. It also asks what it takes to call a language “functional” at all, then uses Java as a test case to see how far you can go with FP ideas in a mostly non functional language.