💥 Issue 97

Mar 26, 2026

Happy Thursday 👋 and a warm welcome to Tech Talks Weekly #97!

Tech Talks Weekly is back after a short break. There is a lot new exciting updates coming up soon, so stay tuned!

This issue includes everything that was published over the last 3 weeks. That means: 371 new conference talks and 60 new podcasts.

Before we start, make sure to check out:

🏆 100 Most Watched Software Engineering Talks Of 2025

Tech Talks Weekly

Mar 11

Read full story

Now, let’s jump right in!

🏆 Featured this week

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

“Uber: Leading engineering through an agentic shift - The Pragmatic Summit” from The Pragmatic Summit 2026
Podcast ⸱ Mar 10, 2026 ⸱ 00h 37m 39s
tldl: Uber shares what it looks like to run “agentic” engineering at scale, starting with toil automation and ending with migrations. It walks through their multi agent workflow model, background agents, and the platform pieces that make it work. It covers logs, observability, and debugging when agents start doing work on their own. Watch the Q&A at the end, too, as it gets into the orgzational and people problems.
“Hijacking Google’s CI/CD Through Prompt Injection:The New Era of AI-Based Exploits-Mackenzie Jackson” from NDC Security 2026
Conference ⸱ +700 views ⸱ Mar 23, 2026 ⸱ 00h 33m 34s
tldw: Prompt injection is a serious threat once you wire LLMs into CI/CD and give them tokens and shell access. This talk shows how a prompt hidden in untrusted text can turn into real command execution inside GitHub Actions. It walks through a CI/CD exploit pattern found at Google.
“Why 10x Engineers Fail: The Culture Gap in Tech Hiring” from QCon London 2026
Conference ⸱ <100 views ⸱ Mar 26, 2026 ⸱ 00h 39m 28s
tldw: Most technical interviews skip the most crucial part which is cultural alignment. This talk shows why chatting about culture chat at the end fails, even when the candidate is a so called 10x engineer. It shows how to “test” for culture during coding and system design rounds.
“Why Most Agentic AI Fails (And How to Fix It)” from The InfoQ Podcast
Podcast ⸱ Mar 26, 2026 ⸱ 00h 54m 32s
tldl: AI agents are non-deterministic. This talk walks through what breaks when you move from simple automation to systems that act on their own. It also treats token spend like the new cloud bill and explains why costs can explode fast.
“Simon Willison: Engineering practices that make coding agents work - The Pragmatic Summit” from The Pragmatic Summit 2026
Conference ⸱ +23k views ⸱ Mar 19, 2026 ⸱ 00h 28m 20s
tldw: Coding agents can write real code, but only if you treat them like untrusted teammates, lean on TDD, and take prompt injection seriously.
“The Software Engineer 2030: From Coder To AI Orchestrator?”
Podcast ⸱ Mar 19, 2026 ⸱ 00h 36m 59s
tldl: This episode argues the 2030 job is less typing code and more steering AI while keeping strong fundamentals. There is a good section on what skills still matter when tools get smarter.
“PostgreSQL Performance Mastery: Tuning and Optimization Strategies”
Podcast ⸱ Mar 10, 2026 ⸱ 00h 59m 21s
tldl: You’ll learn how to spot real bottlenecks, tune queries, and adjust “the right” knobs. You’ll also learn what breaks in high traffic and how to get more out of the same hardware.