TechPod Talks

Are you a tech leader or executive dealing with the real pressures of running production at scale, building teams with limited bandwidth, and figuring out how to actually make AI work? These aren't hypothetical challenges, they're what's keeping engineering leaders up right now, and solid, practical advice is hard to find. Host Stephen Koza, CEO at EverOps, created TechPod Talks to bridge the gap between how leadership perceives challenges in this field and the realities on the ground. The show features conversations with proven technical leaders who share real-world perspectives on the operational problems engineering teams are solving right now. These are the kinds of conversations you'd normally have with your peers in tech over a beer at the end of a long week. No fluff, just solid advice that's actually being implemented. We want you to hear from people who aren't just talking about what needs to happen in tech, but are actively living it. Some of the topics we're covering include: - Scaling engineering teams - Modernizing infrastructure - Getting AI out of pilot and into production - Making hard operational calls without a defined playbook Get past the generic advice and find actionable insights from those who are actively in the arena.

TechPod Talks is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 0 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts TechPod Talks, a business show with 0 episodes published.

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  Episode #13

  Coding Stopped Being the Bottleneck. So What Replaced It?

  Sep 16, 202635 min

  Back in April, Stephen Koza opened episode two with a claim: coding is not the bottleneck, it is everything else. Over the next ten episodes he put a version of that question to ten engineering leaders, and they did not agree with each other. This episode runs their answers side by side and lands on the one thing they had in common, which is that almost none of the answers were technical. Main Topics Covered: Where the bottleneck actually went once code generation stopped being the constraint, from code review to deployment to go to market Why story points are collapsing to a factor of one, and which agile roles can be handed to an agent Request volume jumping 25x in a month, and why cost optimization is always the first work to get dropped Token costs passing human costs, and the case for hiring people back Why AI pilots stall on org structure rather than technology, and the argument for thinning vertically before flattening horizontally The guests who reject the premise, from the limits of vibe coding to the junior engineer pipeline Guests featured in this episode: Mark Sass, Episode 1: LinkedIn Francisco Trindade, Episode 2: LinkedIn Dr. Janet Sherlock, Episode 3: LinkedIn Chris Robertson, Episode 4: LinkedIn Meir Wasserman, Episode 5: LinkedIn Robert Gonzalez, Episode 6: LinkedIn Chris Harden, Episode 7: LinkedIn Jose Gonzalez, Episode 8: LinkedIn Tom Kershaw, Episode 9: LinkedIn Patrick McKinney, Episode 10: LinkedIn Connect with Stephen Koza: LinkedIn Connect with EverOps: Website | LinkedIn References: 2025 DORA State of AI-assisted Software Development The full write up and checklist on the EverOps site

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  Episode #12

  Building to Understand, Storytelling, and AI Adoption Friction with Joel Cloralt

  Sep 2, 202646 min

  Joel Cloralt is Director of Product at Smartcar, a connected vehicle API platform that helps developers build applications connecting to cars, from routing Uber EVs by battery level to smartly managing grid load when everyone plugs in at 5pm. He's spent 15 years building products across fintech, developer tooling, and connected vehicle tech, all while shipping his own apps on the side. Stephen and Joel get into what it actually takes to make a hard pivot work, why clarity beats charisma in leadership, and where AI is genuinely changing how engineers work and where it's just noise. Main Topics Covered: Leading the B2B to B2C pivot at Vault and the decision-making process that made the Acorns acquisition possible, and how to move on 80% conviction when 100% isn't an option Why Joel builds his own apps as a product leader: shipping a Japanese-learning app in Tokyo taught him the difference between what's impressive and what people actually use Introvert leadership in practice: why the room doesn't need you to be an extrovert, it needs you to be clear, and how preparation becomes the whole advantage Storytelling as an organizational tool: why ideas that travel through a company are wrapped in narrative, not bullet points, and how playing a customer interview video to an engineering org beats any slide deck AI at Smartcar: building a developer-facing MCP, making documentation agent-friendly, and the real heavy lift of making sure what the agent responds with is actually accurate The underrated skill of knowing when to stop: in product, the effort gets praised, but judgment about what not to build is rarer and worth more Links & Resources Connect with Joel Cloralt: LinkedIn Connect with Stephen Koza: LinkedIn Connect with EverOps: Website | LinkedIn Books & References: Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto The One Thing by Gary Keller

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  Episode #11

  Career Pivots, Authentic Leadership, and the Agentic Era with Stephen Koza

  Aug 19, 202645 min

  TechPod Talks producer Lauren Dort turns the mic on host Stephen Koza, CEO of EverOps. Stephen traces his path from electrical engineering student at UT Austin to enterprise sales, through Silicon Valley startups and investing, to acquiring and running EverOps since February 2022. The conversation covers what authentic leadership actually looks like in practice, how to hire for ceiling rather than credentials, why most companies are failing to get ROI from AI, and what it will really take before production systems can run autonomously. Main Topics Covered What the squiggly career path actually teaches you, and why putting too much pressure on early-career planning often works against you How to maintain credibility with technical teams when you are not the most technical person in the room Why caring is a leadership behavior, not a personality trait, and what it looks like when someone actually does it versus just says it The difference between hard to work with and toxic, and why conflating the two is a costly leadership mistake The rising star hiring profile: what to look for in candidates whose ceiling far exceeds their current credentials Why most AI initiatives are not making it to production, and what companies need to get right about data and infrastructure before the agentic era delivers real returns Links & Resources Connect with Stephen Koza: LinkedIn Connect with Lauren Hochman Dort: LinkedIn Connect with EverOps: Website | LinkedIn References Radical Candor by Kim Scott What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz

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  Episode #10

  Security, AI Adoption, and Human Judgment with Patrick McKinney

  Aug 5, 202646 min

  Patrick McKinney, VP of Security at Invisible Technologies, has spent his career building security and compliance functions from the ground up, from Coinbase to Dropbox to Salesforce. He shares the playbook lessons that carried across each stop, why phase two never adds security, and how he's applying an AI native approach to security at Invisible while still keeping judgment and accountability firmly in human hands. Main Topics Covered: Building compliance functions from scratch at Coinbase, Dropbox, and Salesforce, and the lesson that phase two never adds security Standing up SOX and GDPR compliance ahead of Dropbox's 2018 IPO Early FedRAMP work at Salesforce, including a dedicated authorized colo built entirely from scratch Investing in an agentic SOC platform and running quality bake offs before adopting new AI security tools Knowing when to shift security ownership from a CTO or head of IT to a dedicated security professional How AI is reshaping entry level talent, and why judgment and accountability still belong to humans Links & Resources: Connect with Patrick McKinney: LinkedIn Connect with Stephen Koza: LinkedIn Connect with EverOps: Website | LinkedIn

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  Episode #9

  Prebid, Music Royalties, and Leading Through Transformation with Tom Kershaw

  Jul 22, 202646 min

  Tom Kershaw, SVP and CTO at BMI, shares how a career spanning telecom, ad tech, travel, and now music rights taught him to learn new industries fast and lead through transformation. He breaks down the massive data challenge of tracking billions of music performances, the open source story behind Prebid that led to Google's antitrust trial, and why trying to stop AI in music is a losing battle. Main Topics Covered: Crossing industries from telecom to ad tech to music rights, and why going deep on one thing (not everything) is the fastest way to learn a new business The Prebid open source story: uniting competing ad tech companies against Google's walled gardens, and testifying in the DOJ antitrust trial How BMI tracks billions of music performances across streaming, live venues, TikTok, and elevators to pay 1.5 million songwriters Solving two data problems at once: high-complexity structured ownership data (SQL) and high-scale streaming counts (Kafka, Databricks, Spark) Why AI in music can't be stopped, how songwriters already use it, and the ethical frameworks BMI is building around opt-in and attribution Transformation leadership: why "focus" literally means "no," and the willingness to fail and course correct is the only way through Links: Connect with Tom Kershaw: LinkedIn Connect with Stephen Koza: LinkedIn Connect with EverOps: Website | LinkedIn

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